New-York tribune. [volume] (New York [N.Y.]) 1866-1924, 1904-12-04
MINING MADE EASY.
Soft Ore of Mesabi Range ScOoped
Up by ShoUels.

has stored I'D. Rarely does she throw them into |
his hands Men willing to bore deep holes
into the earths crust at great cost with no |
greater incentive than the belief that gold, |
silver iron, copper coal is to be found some |
where in the neighborhood underneath. Out in |
Minnesota, however, Nature has done her best |
to negative the penalty pronounced on Adams |
sin that he and his descendants should eat bread
by the sweat of their brows. In the Mesabi |
range of hills Nature has deposited bed of SOFT
dustlike iron so near the surface that ii is |
only necessary to lay a track and put in a steam
shovel to gather the store No expensive shaft |
is needed. There is danger of cave-in to kill
miners. There is no pumping plant needed to
keep the mine free from water. Nature takes
of the ventilation. steam shovel OPP |
Grated by few levers takes the place of sweat
ing men toiling with picks and drills and push
ing laden tramcars through the bowels of the
earth. There is laborious transfer of ore from
tramcars to the railroad cars, for when the
trapdoor in the bottom of the steam shovel
opens it is over a railroad standing along
side, a:;3 the ore is deposited in the vehicle in
which it is to be transferred to the coast In a
word the owners of the mines sixty miles north |
of Duluth are able to gather up their wealth |
with a steam shovel, while other mine owners |
dig theirs out by the sweat of mems brows and |
at great financial cost. Ownership of such mines |
ought to satisfy the most rapacous of men. |
OHS VI ore DeuS, HdiNeSlGu III lltlS IldllIleIp
has yielded nearly two million tons of in |
one year. 1t is not strange that since work was |
begun on these deposits ten years ago Mime |
sofa has ranked second in the list of iron pro- |
ducng States.
The quickness with which the is gathered |
here is difficult Of comprehension to those who !
are accustomed to think of iron a product |
broken up by human muscle deep down in a
mine. For instance here one great steam shovel !
III a sunlit field, employing nine men, does in an
hour what would be the days work of five hun
dred men working in the depths of under
ground mine. One of these shovels mines and
loads $500 tons in one day. James j. HILL when
he paid his first visit to the Mesabi range, said:
1.-The problem of production is principally
a problem of the proper switching of trains"
That this is so is evident when realizes that
a train of ten fifty ton can be loaded by
the shovel in thirty minutes. In less than three
hours five switching train loads are handled and
stand on the main track, ready to start for the
piers Lake Superior, three days undertake
ing for many a large underground mine. One
mine. the Stevenson. on July II, this year, pro-
duced and loaded on 442 cars 10000 long tons of
The with which opportunity can be
passed by and great wealth sometimes missed
is illustrated in the history of these mines.
Biologists who had tramped all the ground
in which this lay said there was nothing to
be found which made working it worth while
The conditions on the MeSabi range, these ex-
perts said, were not right Ore could never be
found in paying quantities in a blanket forma-
ton. There no hope of the deposits be-
coming of Importance The hopes of the men
who had secured options for Eases on some Of
the most promising pieces of land were dashed
to the ground. Nine years later were using
a steam shovel to scoop up mineral wealth from
this same land at the rate of than thirteen
million tons year.
1t found that all that necessary in
order to get at the to cut off the timber
and turn back the blanket of grassy turf which
Dame Nature had carefully tucked over this
infant industry" This blanket ranged between
twenty and forty feet in thickness. With the
aid of a number of steam shoves and railroad
sidings it was lifted, and the revealed. where
ii had been waiting for a with a little
energy to find it. Opening the mines much
like threading a circular labyrinth.
1t is so easy to gather and dispatch the iron
ore from these mines to the great furnaces ana
mills of the East that the story of how it is
done seems almost Ike a fairy tale. Man seems
to have little to 'l it beyond directing the
forces that perfCI- work. An engineer
seated in the cab of : Grill engine leads string
of ears down into the pit. Travcrsing a circle