The Birmingham age-herald., 1924-04-27

thickness. The high grade Aetna coal from near Chattanooga has been ship ped for blacksmiths uses all over the United States. The Clinch and Powell rivers both lead directly into the coal fields and of fer the same opportunity for the trans portation of coal, when improved by locks and dams, that is now found on the Monongahela rivera stream which has carried as high as 20,000,000 tons of coal in single year. s..-4l
 Shorter Route
 The Tennessee river, moreover, has the advantage of offering route from the Appalachian coal fields that is shorter by 400 miles than the Monon- gahela-Ohio rivers route to Missis- sippi valley points, and it may be pre- dicted with certainty that when con- tinuous slack-water system of sufficient depth has been completed on the Ten nessee river the shipment of coal by this route will run into many thousands of tons annually.
 Iron ore in the Tennessee valley is available in three varieties The brown ore, the Clinton or red hematite, and, the magnetic or magnetic. Referring to these ores, Mir. E. F. Burchard, geol- ogist of the United States geological survey, has stated.
 "The reserves of ore that will be available for future use are shown to be larger than the Birmingham district, judged by the same standards"
 As to quantity, to cite a single ex- ample, there is estimated to be some 0,000, GOO tons of brown ore within S5 miles of Chattanooga, while under Look out mountain there is an ore bed of red ore some 34 inches thick which has been calculated to contain more than two and a half billion tons of recov- erable ore. Other minerals of great economic i'm portance are the marbles, of which there is an enormous quantity of various, shades and colors, high in quality and of great beauty; large slate deposits which have never been worked; phos- phate rock, with an estimated reserve of about one hundred million tons of high grade rock, suitable for sulphuric acid treatment; and perfectly enor~- nous reserve of rock suitable for treat ment in the electric furnace. There are many hundreds of thousands of tons of bauxite or aluminium ore, not far from the Tennessee river, and millions of tons of high grade zinc ore are to be found along the tributaries above Knoxville. Clays of highest quality are available all through West Tennessee; and ce. ment materials, including very rare limestone for lime making. are to be found at many points along the river. . Other Raw Materials
 Other raw materials are barite, or heavy spar, used as, a filler for paper, rubber, etc, copper and its by-products, suiphuric acid, the latter produced in one of the largest plants in the world, also gold and silver, salt, gypsum, lead, asphalt, manganese, mica, quartz, tale and corundum, as well as an enormous tonnage of high grade dolomite as possible source of metallic magnesium. An estimate of the annual production of mineral and agricultural resources of the Tennessee valley, made in 1918, showed total value of about $550, ,OO0,- GOO.
 It was not many years ago that trav- elers, crossing the Tennessee river for the first time on the main line of the Louisville and Nashville railroad at Decatur or on the. Southern railway at