Evening capital news. (Boise, Idaho) 1901-1927, 1917-11-18

M IL IN world. Ihe Germans are
GSS9N@SIO using it as the robbers did
in "The Arabian Nights" tale of Ali Baba
and the Forty Thieves. In the great war OF
today, the Germans take the place OF the
Forty Thieves and ourselves and our allies
represent Ali Baba, who conquers them by
their own password have written of the
efficiency of our iron mines and how by
steam shovels we are getting out ore for the
steel required for the war. A single steam
shovel will mine from five to seven thous-
and tons in one day, or enough to load a
train of two-horse wagons thirty miles long
The password of ore transportation is
the same. Five up-to-date railroads are
taking the iron from the mines down to the
lakes. Efficiency is stamped upon the cars
and their operation. Each car holds up
ward of 100000 pounds, and from fifty to
one hundred of them are carried down to
the ports by a single engine. l have count.
ed trains of IFS cars. These trains are
loaded in the mines and they do not stop
until their contents are dropped into the
great ore bins through which, by gravity,
they pass into the mighty steamers that
carry them thousand miles down the lakes
This is so notwithstanding the ore must be
graded and sorted to fit the requirements
for making steel of various kinds, and
weighed by the government in course OF
transit. The weighing is done while the cars
pass through the station of Proctor, which
is the largest ore yard of the world. All
they do is to slow up as they go through to
{; speed of less than eight miles an hour. At
this speed they pass over automatic scales
which record their weight.
Efficiency stamps the transfer OF the ore
from the cars to the huge steamers which
carry it to the steel plants. The loading
docks about Lake Superior have cost mil
lions. You may see them at Two Harbors,
at Duluth, and at the ports of northern Wis
consin and Michigan. I came into Two
Harbors on the James A. Farrell, the flag
ship of the fleet of the United States Steel
corporation, and watched them taking OH
ore. The huge steamer, low, rakish look
ing craft about sixty feet wide and 5000 feet
long, came to anchor under a steel pier as
high as an eight story house The pier
reached like great arm far out into the
water. There are four of these piers at Two
Harbors and one of them is almost half a
mile long. Each pier upholds double row
of bins made of concrete into which the ore
is dropped from the cars which shoot in from
the mines onto the tracks overhead, and
from the bottom of each long steel chute
or spout allows the ore to pour down into
the vessels. The chutes are raised and low
cred by electricity. They extend from the
bins right into the hold and the pulling OF
a lever will drop a river of ore into the ship
The Farrell has thrty-four matches, and,
were it advisable, all could be loading at
once from that many bins overhead 1t takes
only two or three minutes to empty bin,
and 1900 tons of ore have been loaded in
less than an hour Three steamers were
taking cargo at the time of my visit and
within two or three hours more than $4,000
tons of iron had started on its way down
Lake Superior.
Similar loading is going on at the other
ports of the lake. During my stay at Ash
land, Wis, where | went to take passage on
steamer carrying ore from the Gopcbic
mines down to the Illinois steel plant | OBJ
served how the ore was mixed and graded
during the loading. To make the best steel
one must have just thelright proportion of
certain ores, and the mixing is done in the
loading SO that when the ore reaches the
steel plant it is ready to be dumped without
change into the furnaces. Everything is
scientifically exact. The ores are analyzed
at the mines, samples being taken from the
ears as they leave, and the ores from diff