Free press. [volume] (Hays, Kan.) 1888-1908, 1901-05-04
ORE IN TRANSIT.
MARVELLOUS ACHIEVEMENTS OF
LAKE BOATS.
rransPortatson Of Iron Ore Treated In
. Descriptive and Statistical Article
DevsIOPnent OF the Commercial Navy
of the Great LakeA

In the Century The TRANSPORTATION
Of Iron" is described by Walden Faw-
cett, with drawings by Ernest l. Blum
enschein., To carry the freshly mined
ore twelve hundred miles by land and
sea, he says, and deposit il, within
little more than a week after it has
left the miners shovel, at the furnaces
in Pennsylvania and Ohio, where it is
to receive its baptism of fire, is the
task which has been successfully &C
complished of late years by the men
who have charge of the transportation
chain which connects the mineral
storehouses in the Northwest with the
manufacturing plants of the middle
states. They have. indeed, done more;
by undertaking operations on gigan-
tic scale, they have shaved costs so
closely that the embryo iron is now
carried more cheaply than freight is
moved anywhere else in the world. 1t
is a marvellous transit, this trip third
of the way across the continent, and
the journey itself is not more wonder
ful than the vehicles in which it is
made. The flying trip is made by rail,
then by boat, and finally by rail again;
and it might be made even more quick
ly were it not necessary to lose
day and a half changing cars" so to
speak, although in reality, of course,
the transfer is from cars to the mon
ster freight-carrying vessels of the
Great Lakes, and thence back again
from the leviathans of the inland seas
to the metal wagons of the steam-road.
On the first stage of its journey, from
the mine to the loading-wharf at some
port on the upper lakes, the iron ore
travels on what is probably the most
crowded stee!-tracked highway in the
world. Each Of the powerful locomO-
tives can draw a load of ore nearly
equal to the weight of the entire Amer
lean standing army prior to the Span
ish war. Almost all the cars now en-
plOyed are made of pressed steel, and
each of them will hold fifty tons. II
would seem as though the designers
Of these modern coaches of commerce.
had thought of every contingency, for
there are even provided holes in. the
sides of the car through which streams
of steam may be played upon the froz-
en- ore in order to thaw it quickly. The
| development of the commercial navy
of the Great Lakes, the chief work of
which is found in the transportation Of
iron ore, constitutes one OF the most
remarkable evolutions of the century
which has just closed. The first car
goes of the mineral were transported in
vessels that carried only a few hun
| dred tons and required more than two
| weeks for the journey. The new craft
carry ten or twenty times as much,
and little more than half as many days
are given up to the delivery of each
consignment at its port of destination.
All the best of the lake vessels are en-
| pIoyed largely or exclusively in the ore
| traffic-a natural sequence since this
is the one plum of internal commerce
| at which the railroads get scarcely a
| nibble Indeed the ''aIl-rail'' ship
ments, as they are termed. hardly ex-
coed half a million tons yearly, out of
a total of twenty million tons. That
| the steanl-lines get even this morsel
| of comfort is largely due to the eXigen-
| cies of sudden demand after the ice
! has sealed up the waterway. The ships
of the ore-f1eet range from three hun
dred and fifty to five hundred feet in
| length-the latter equal in size to the
| transatlantic liners of a few years ago
! Few of them draw. when fully laden
more than eighteen feet of water, and
they are capable of carrying anywhere
| from six thousand to nine thousand
tons of ore. or d sufficient quantity
to fill more than a dozen ordinary rail-
road trains. The modern vessels are
| built entirely of steel. even to the deck
| houses, where the men eat and sleep
and the slender, bare masts- Essen
TALLY they are freight-carriers, and yet
for the accommodation of occasional
guests there are fitted up on many Of
them rooms quite as handsomely fur
! nished as those on the average ocean
going passenger steamer. The vessel:
are lighted by electricity, steered ant
heated by steam; and in their equip
ment are included power-windlasse:
and all the latest contrivances of thu
up-to-date deep-water carrier.