WHAT NATURE HAS DONE FOR THE AMERICAN IRONMONGER.
WE must recognize the lavish hand with which nature prepared the way for our industrial triumphs, by accumulating, along the southern and western shores of Lake Superior, those vast beds of iron ore, which are not only the most extensive in the world, but are so placed that the labor of excavating and loading for shipment is practically nothing. The ore, which is extremely rich, sixty per cent of it being iron, lies practically at the surface of the ground; and it is so loose and friable that all that is necessary for its recovery is to run in a train of cars, set a steam shovel at work, and load the material directly on to the cars. This work has actually been done at the rate of 5,800 tons in ten hours, and this with the labor of but eight men at a cost of five cents only per ton for labor. The supply is enormous, a single corporation having recently estimated its holdings at 500,000,000 tons, valued at as many million dollars. These vast and easily-recovered supplies, however, would have a limited value, were there not available a proportionate supply of coking coal; and this has been provided with an equally lavish hand in the famous Connellsville district, where a single coke company on entering into one of the great industrial combinations of the past few years, stated that it owned 40,000 acres of coal lands in this region, and 11,000 coke ovens. Within easy reach of the coal district there are also large quarries of limestone, the third of the three constituents in the charge of a blast furnace.—The Iron and Steel Number of the Scientific American.