The Iola register. [volume] (Iola, Allen County, Kansas) 1875-1902, 1901-09-27
STORY OF
SHELTERS
Someone who Seems to Know
Writes Entertainingly
About the Manner in Which
Three Great Combinations
of Capital, After
A FIGHT FOR SUPREMACY
Lasting Several Years Have
at Last Concluded to
Call it a Draw and Combine
1T may be Fiction but it
is Interesting

The history of lola and Allen coun-
ty is indissolubly connected with the
history of zinc smelling now and so
the following historical sketch of the
past and prophesy of the future, from
the Lead and Zinc News, of St.
Louis, is of great interest here. In its
last issue the News says
Joplin, Mo-, Sept. 14-The probable
consolidation of the smelling interests
is leading topic among mine oper-
ators again this week. 1t is now
talked by members of the Missouri
and Kansas Zinc Miners Association
that it is practically certain that the
Matthiessen e. Hegeler Zinc Company
is in harmony with the consolidation
of the shelters. In all the history of
zinc smelling In the United States the
Matthiessen & Hegeler Zinc Company
has stood out distinctive and alone,
the most prominent factor in the metal
market of this country and in touch
with the metal market of the whole
world. For twenty-five years this big
Illinois company practically dictated
the price of zinc ore, spelter and sheet
zinc, and before the day of gas smelt-
ers it was the ruling power, setting
ore and spelter at ruinously opposite
prices when competing smaller con-
Germs appeared to cut figure in the
metal market. Suddenly spelter would
begin declining, asthis company would
force it upon a burdened market,
and ore prices would as surely decline
until one or more of the small coal
shelters would draw their fires and
withdraw at least temporarily from
the business. This see-saw process
became so we'll known to some mine
operators that they grew to expect
profit from an advancing ore market
whenever the metal market began to
break
The smelter fight of 1889, which sent
zinc ore up to $50, was outlined in The
Lead and Zinc News last week and
from it grew an entirely new order of
lNlbtlNt Olb anu llltAdl IIlNtSs IHt
market price of zinc ore was estab
lished at that time and has remained
practically unchanged on basis a
shade lower than siX-to-one, desp ite
the efforts of the association of pro-
ducers to have it established on a
seven-to-one basis.
The plan is based upon the knowl-
edge that the best zinc will smelt less
than sixty per cent metal. Whatever
the per cent of metal the ore will actu-
ally smelt was the theory of price, the
basis covering the cost of carriage
and smelling the ore and marketing
the metal sold at home. If the ore
would smelt sixty per cent metal the
basis would figure out exactly siX-to-
one. That is, multiply the price of
metal in st. Louis by six and the re-
suit would be the price of sixty per
cent zinc ore per ton. The sliding
scale was adopted to cover the great
variance in the quality of concen-
trates, adding one dollar per unit for
superior ore and deducting one dol
lar per unit of one per cent of assay
for inferior ore. There is teen a
further deduction of one dollar per
ton for each one per cent of iron con-
tents and a general deduction of two
per cent for moisture, though in some
cases this is regulated by the actual
moisture shown in the assay sample.
Coal smelling in Kansas, where
slack coalwas obtained in many cases
free of cost to the shelters, was a con-
slant menace to the control of the
metal market by the Matthiessen &
Hegeler company, of LaSalle, Illinois,
but they managed to have things gem
orally their own way until the adop-
ton of natural gas for smelling zinc
ore. Then came the war that held on
unremittingly for almost year.
Back in the coal days of smelling
Robert Lanyon, an Englishman and a
wheelwright by trade, was located at
Mineral Point, Wis. He was called
upon to do some repairing to a smell
ter at that place, and from this be-
came interested in the process of zinc
smelling, which he studied until he
had attained competent knowledge
of it, He then located at the little
coal mining town of Pittsburg, Kans.,
26 miles from Joplin, which was
springing into existence in 1884, when
it was first becoming known to the
smelter world that the Joplin lead dis
trict was producing large amount OF