but it is not what the people of minnesota think and many of the attractions of the fair of them to think about the things that take place in the state in which they live there are displayed in exhibits which changed this once prairie and forest wilderness into the progressive forward looking state that is minnesota today but soon the cotton candy the peanuts and popcorn the soda relationships under the spell of the state fair let's meet some of the friendly people look in on them if they find happiness and enjoy a bit here's joe were you his wife anna and joe now he can't sell his daughter the idea of a candy is to be rubbed on his neck and here are the people the farm in southern minnesota dairy cows and brother fred is a mining engineer he's worked in iron ore mines all his life and over the years he had watched the changes that huge developments well yes and no you see it's like this sixty five percent iron seems to me that's pretty rich digging and we don't actually dig this are we concentrated from hard rock takes a long and expensive process to make it this rich i've heard that the mining companies are getting out once the good are gone while i don't think the companies are going to pull out yet but what putrid do you see in minnesota mining nowadays all that or they found elaborate on south america's banner our mining industry is not  be on a range work in sun a layoff when are too rough that's right isn't it now wait a minute not so fast sure a lot of people have a lot of questions in their minds about iron mining people are naturally interested in the iron range what goes on up there what it contributes to the whole state but many of the questions are a result of what somebody told somebody else all the questions have answers answers based on the knowledge and understanding of what's going on up there on the range today to make the industry bigger than you could visit the range you'd see why iron ore mining is one of the biggest industries in minnesota and of first importance to the nation an industry that contributes millions of dollars to payrolls purchases in t every community in the state benefits in one way or another the iron ore mining industry means jobs for thousands of people in minnesota about fifteen thousand people earning more than fifty millions of payroll dollars every year that supports a lot of other folks drug this doctors lawyers grocers butchers small retail stores of every kind more than a quarter of a million people in northeastern minnesota are directly or indirectly supported by the mining industry think of it everywhere you look you can see for yourself why the mining industry must plan for years and years ahead you can see it in the great harl rust mahoning open to the largest of all the iron mines mining iron ore in the open pit seems like an easy job but it isn't as easy as it appears to be open to mining involves a lot of big machines to dagon process the or railways and ships to transported to the nation's steel mills and the working together of thousands of people stretched over a thousand miles and the spending of hundreds of millions of dollars to get the iron ore to the steel burnished grade ore represents less than five percent of the my noble portion of the rock formation that contains iron but no matter how much or was dug out of the ground there was always a need for more and then after fifty years of mining and two world wars something happened on the old massage the rain shovels were beginning to scrape bottom and before allowing the word spread fast that the digging was running out great deposits of good iron ore in minnesota were fading away and the good or the jinns of tons of that was to be had in foreign countries and even in other parts of the united states companies were going to quit the minnesota iron over washed up yes sir that's what a lot of people pronto what those people didn't think about was this for many years mining experts of considered the end of minnesota's high grade direct you see here mr williams and take the children over to the midway for a while but at the mining companies use only high grade ore there wouldn't be any great future in minnesota iron mining but they are out to keep the minnesota iron range in business a bigger and better business and we've ever thought of for generations to come by here's what i mean now in addition to the good iron ore you're talking about which contains about fifty one and a half percent iron there are hundreds of millions of tons of low grade ore or which miners coleen washoe intermediate with a much lower percentage of iron and a street grey rock called taconite which is nature's original iron bearing rock containing as little as twenty five percent iron it's all these orange together plus the great advances in mechanical methods of mining and metallurgy and more millions of dollars for experimentation and new processing plants that hold the future of minnesota mining secure you make it sound like a complicated operations just as good but on the ground all mining is a complicated and costly operation even an open pit min which seems so simple for instance when you see a popple in pine forest up on the range you could be seeing an iron mine but you'd never know it until you did a lot of exploring you first have to drill down the find out if there's or beneath  you may have to put down a hundred of those or more and if you're lucky enough to find it then you plan how it can be mined then the roads have to be built through the forest to bring in the equipment some of the machines weigh twenty tons and better there are deep layers of sand rock and clay that cover the iron ore all this must be stripped away miners call this waste material overburden in some open pit operations this waste material as deep as a thirty story building must be removed before you get a deal or and that's only part of what makes mining an expensive business and uses something about no work in winter actually there's a lot of work done in the wintertime for instance stripping clearing away the waste that goes on all winter and most big repair jobs on the biggest put meant are made during the winter and underground mining goes on throughout the whole year never stops and here's a point to remember the cost of producing underground or are large so large that only the highest grade of ores may be mined by this method underground mining is a big job complicated job surface does that sound like they're busy only in summer house or there are more operations starting up all the time the way they're operating today that offseason bugaboo is becoming a thing of the past would claim then that mining would be a study of businesses manufacturing why certainly the mining of iron ore today is already becoming a manufacturing business because a whole lot of the or has to be process concentrated by one method or another before it can do you just you see even all the good direction or is not ready for the blast furnace when it's scooped out of the earth some of the or is mined in the form of huge chunks big plans have been built throughout the range country to crush and size this or is it comes from the pits it takes pressures big ones that cost a lot of money break up the chunks reduce them to size most of the direction of being or as to be crushed it adds to the cost of mining but does not increase the iron content has to be done however before they are can be used to steel mills and it may seem strange but mining calls for a laundry washing machines to clean low grade iron ore washing is the most common practice of iron ore concentrating low grade material going in at the top of the great plants worked its way down through many complicated machines lighter sand and impurities are carried away in moving water to leave only the good or ready to start it on its way to the steel mills and every pair is taken to remove silt and other waste material from the water used in washing iron o so the clean water is returned to the lake or stream from which it was drawn thousands of tons of or were set aside not so many years ago not usable because of their low iron content today experiments are being made to extract dianora from some of this crude material formerly considered waste before these experiments no want to even consider this or in reserve estimates because it cannot be used but not as these experiments work out hundreds of thousands of tons of this or are being added to the iron ore reserves of the state with over fifty processing plants they get a little in operation conservation is being continued and the life of the better deposits is being probed in some plants the low grade ore is screened priced gaijin washed in a single continuous operation literally manufacturing good iron ore for material once thought to low and iron to bother with it seems to me these new methods actually increasing our usable iron our supply exactly and in addition to those there's the taconite the hired iron bearing rock found in great abundance in minnesota and also in wisconsin michigan and canada not many years ago everyone considered this rock as waste just troublesome overburden that had to be blasted out to get the or but mining men assisted by the university of minnesota mines experiment station i working out methods to convert into high grade ore they hope to do it at a cost to compete with other or as much work has been done to process attack and i think there's still more experiments going on all the time the process of manufacturing high grade ore from t e sounds very simple it consists of blasting and crushing the rock apart creating it to separate the waste putting what is left back together again but to do all that on a commercial scale takes lots of money and of man just think what it would cost to build and run a commercial taconite plant they many more workers pay for power and machinery somebody has to go out on the limb to the tune of millions of dollars just to find out what will work somebody has made the venture the mining companies but the result the taconite processing is no longer a rumor or a dream it's a fact though it's only in the experimental plant stage now how big a commercial activity this may become in minnesota in the future depends upon whether or not the industry can do this at a cost that can compete with taconite from other states and countries and high grade ores that are mind in other places if the industry is able to take the next and the use of manufactured ores supplemented by reserves of good natural ores the future of the industry in minnesota is really bright this taconite process is simple to tell about but it involves a lot of ingenuity special plants each one costing a fortune had to be built throughout the range for research and experimentation to try out different methods the taconite process begins with the  the growing machines go to work a jet piercing drill operating at temperatures up to four thousand degrees fahrenheit burns holes through solid rock for blasting one shot tons of crude tech and i hired rock can be torn loose from the earth the dark streets in this rock are iron ore but the or isn't very fine particles some of them smaller than a spec processes designed to separate the iron ore from the rock just fine particles of iron ore are pulled off by strong magnets and the kosher low grade material is passed back through the mill for more crashing but the job is not finished then right now this concentrate is as fine as toner so fine it can't be loaded the ship has to be put back together again now one way to put the taconite back together is by pelletis make rounds pellets or marbles of uniform size out of the powder in pellet ties in the small balls roll out of the drum onto an endless belt which carries them to the furnace hot gases baked the pellets hot enough stand up on the trip to the steel mills another method is called centering and still another called not utilizing in this rotary kiln heat is applied to the potter taconite as the binding agent burns on it leaves a solid lump of iron ore each method does substantially the same thing and that's all mighty interesting but how does this new process of making a boil on a rock affect the natural or we still have the state the great promise of the future lies in the conservation of our iron ore by joining this new development with what we have made supply of or the steel makers need we can insure the future of iron ore mining in minnesota if we treat our combined iron ore resources as a single source of raw material that has to compete with the products of other regions mining industry today is a highly specialized manufacturing business that supports directly and indirectly nearly a quarter million people a quarter million people who create a great market for the products and services of many other industries in the state of minnesota which benefit the world the people of the state for me for instance the people in the iron range country did not begin to grow all the food they eat they buy a farm products of farms all over the state all the year on small and large contractors probably all over the state supplied timber and other materials and services for them m every school district your own school even the university of minnesota benefits directly from the permanent school trust fund built primarily by an iron ore taxes royalties from state  continued prosperity and future security depend on this new era in the iron ore mine and the people in the rest of the state world all benefit from this great industry this is the faith of the mining companies in the future of the mining industry in the state a faith that the people will wholeheartedly support such a program the people of minnesota can contribute to such a valuable development by public understanding of the iron mining industry and by encouraging the policies of government which will extend to iron mining the same treatment accorded to other manufacturing industries in the state  people will stay on the range work in these plants build their own raise their families arrange and the whole state of minnesota will see a security greater than