Evening star., 1917-11-04
Fighting the Hvm With Steam Saovels of Iron Mines

with diamond drills. machines that cut
out holes in the earth as big around
as your arm and bring out solid cores
of the strata as thick as your wrist.
These holes are often thousand feet
deep. They go from the surface of
the earth down to the ore body. and
through that body to the stratum below.
The core that comes up gives the thick
ness of the iron deposit, and when the
chemists have analysed it 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 its exact shape is known.
even though its form be that of an
octopus. With tentacles reaching out
in every direction. The drill. in short.
is like great X-ray camera. 1t photo
graphs the ore deposit. just the *
ray shows the bullet or needle in the
flesh.
This work is expensive. It costs five
or ten thousand dollars to equip a
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
d million dollars year in finding out
what ore it has and whether the new
ore lands offered to it are worth the
taking. That company has done so
much drilling that if the holes could
he Joined end to end they would reach
farther than from Philadelphia to
Pittsburgh
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 be
cut and the stumps taken out. After
stripped of. 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 100000 cubic yards Of
stripping. or enough to have filed
two-horse wagon train reaching from
the earth three-fourths Of the way to
the moon
After the ore Is stripped it has to be
gouged out with the steam shovels and
loaded on the f1fty-ton cars which carry
1t down to the vessels on the shores of
Lake Superior. The most of the ore
here looks like red clay or dirt. Some
OF 1t is in large Jumps. but when
broken up by the blasting it 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 tpe ore Is lean OF fat
according to the mount of iron it con-
tains. What the bfg companies are now
doing is to take out and send to the
steel plants the fat ore, or that which
contains a profitable percentage of iron.
The lean ore also is excavated, but it
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.
In 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
shovels go on day and night. and a
continuous train OF cars moves down
the mountains to the docks on the lake.
During my stay I have visited many
of these open-pit mines belonging to
the Oliver Iron Mining Company. whose
output last year was about twenty
eight million tons of ore. or Al per
cent of all the ore mined In this region.
The first one saw lies within pis-
tol shot of the town of Virginia. 1t
covers eighty acres. and the ore lies in
a great triangle the base of which is a
half mile wide, and the apex a quarter
of mile high. The ore body contains
altogether about twenty million tons,
and they are now taking 1t out for tho
use of the government.
Z When the ore was first found the
land was covered with forest. The
stripped down thirty feet to the iron
formation. II you will take a farm Of
eighty acres and lift off the dirt and
rock to the depth Of a five-story house.
making a great pit over the whole
farm. fifty 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 100000 carloads. All
this was done with steam shovels, the
stun being carried away In long trains
of cars Of fifty tons each.
Today the shovels are working the
mine. Some of the ore body is 80 soft
that 1T can be mined without blast
ing, Other parts are opened pa dvns up Hy