The Birmingham age-herald., 1917-11-04

how much pure iron it contains. They also get an exact picture of how the deposit lies, and how thick or how thin every part of 1t is and how much is lean and how much Is fat
 large part of this work Is done with diamond drills, machines that cut out holes in the earth as big around az your arm and bring out solid cores of the strata as thick as your wrist. These holes are often 8 thousand feet deep. They go from the surface or the cath down to the ore body, and through that body to the stratum be- low. The core that comes up gives the thickness of the iron deposit and when the chemists have analysed 1t they know Just how much iron 1t contains. Holes like this are sunk all over this region So many are drilled through each bed of iron that it's exact shape is known, even though it's form De that of an octopus. with tentacies reaching out in every direction. The drill in short, Is like great N-ray camera. It photographs the ore deposit just as the x-ray shows the bullet or needle in the flesh.
 The work Is expensive. It costs $5000 or s10,o00 to equip drilling outfit and the force sufficient to operate it. The Oliver Iron Mining company, which is a branch of the United States Steel corporation, spends a million dol lars a year in finding out what ore It has and whether the new ore lands offered to 1t are worth the taking. That company has done so much drill ing that if the holes could be Joined end to end they would reach farther than from Philadelphia to Pittsburg.
 After the ore body has been outlined the land must be cleared. The most of the country here has been covered with forests. The trees have to De cut and the stumps taken out. After that the soil above the ore has to be stripped off. It is scooped up with steam shovels, loaded on the cars and carried away. Up until two years ago they had removed more dirt in that way from these open pit mines than was moved in making the Panama canal From the Hall Hurst mine alone they took off 30,000,000 cubic yards Of stripping, or enough to have filled 8 two-horse wagon train reaching from the earth three.fourths of the way to the moon.
 After the ore is stripped 1t has to be gouged out with the steam shovels and loaded on the 50-ton cars which carry it down to the vessels on the shores Of Lake Superior. The most of the ore here looks like red clay or dirt. Some Of it is in large Jumps, but when broken up by the blasting 1t looks for all the world like the dirt you dig up on the roadside.
 Iron ore Is. as you know, merely iron rust, or rotten iron mixed with sand or silicon, and the ore is lean or fat ac- cording to the amount of iron 1t contains. What the big companies are now doing Is to take out and send to the steel plants the fat ore, or that which contains profitable percentage of iron. The lean ore also Is excavated. but 1t Is stacked up in great piles with the idea that 1t may be used in the future. There are millions of tons of such ore now stored up for that purpose.
 Tn all of the mines the steam shovels are working, and the force of thou sands of miners is as well organized as our troops in the field The steam shoveis go on day and night, and a continu- ous train of cars moves down the noun tains to the docks or the lake. During my stay, have visited many of these cpen-ptt mines belonging to the Oliver Iron Mining company, whose output last year was about 2S,Oo0.0o0 tons of ore, or 1T per cent of all the ore mined in this region.
 he first one I saw lies within q pis- LOl ShOr or LEl9 -4lO~u OL Y liS covers 30 acres, and the ore lies in 2 e~eat triangle. the base of which Is 8 half-mi1e wide, and the apex -qaarte of u mile high. The ore body contains altogether about 2o.oo0.oao tons and they arc now taking 1t out for the use ot the government
 When the ore was first found the land was covered with forest. The trees had to be cut off and the earth stripped Co f4 ha troy oti you will take a farm of 80 acres and lift off the dirt and rock to the depth of five-story house, making a great pit over the whole farm. 50 feet deep, you will have some idea of what the miners had to do before they began to work on the Iron. The stripping taken away was something like 200 900 carloads. All this was done with steam shovels, the stuff being carried away in long trains of cars of 50 tons eacn.
 Today the shovelS are working the mine. Some of the ore body is so soft that 1t can be mined without blasing. Other parts are opened up by hundreds of charges, the dynamite throwing the iron mixed earth high into the air.
 stood a while on tho edge of the Biwabic mine and watched the steam shovels working. This mine Is In the form of great cut like that of Culebra. 1t Is now more than 250 feet deep. Start ing from the grass roots there are gray strata of clay and rock. running down perhaps 40 feet Below comes a deposi of rich, reddish brown earth. so soft that it could be easily dug with pick. Thls Is the iron bearing formation which Is being cut off in layers about 30 feet thick. or of the depth to which a steam shovel can work. If you will consider the ore body as great loaf of brown bread, ard each of the layers a slice. you will get some idea of how the steam shovels are mining and dropping the ore into the cars. In some places they have cut through the main body and are getting