The Greatest Works of Charles Carleton Coffin. Charles Carleton Coffin
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When this fact was made known, railroad companies began to use Lake Superior iron for the construction of locomotives, car-wheels, and axles. Boiler builders wanted it. Those who tried it were eager to obtain more, and the result is seen in the rapidly increasing demand.
The average cost of mining and delivering the ore in cars at the mines is estimated at about $2 per ton. It is shipped to Cleveland at a cost of $4.35, making $6.35 when laid on the dock in that city, where it is readily sold for $8, leaving a profit of about $1.65 per ton for the shipper. Perhaps, including insurance and incidentals, the profit may be reduced to about $1.25 per ton. It will be seen that this is a very remunerative operation.
About one hundred furnaces in Ohio and Pennsylvania use Lake Superior ore almost exclusively, while others mix it with the ores of those regions.
A large amount is smelted at Lake Superior, where charcoal is used. The forests in the vicinity of the mines are rapidly disappearing. The wide-spreading sugar-maple, the hardy yellow birch, the feathery hackmatack and evergreen hemlock are alike tumbled into the coal-pit to supply fuel for the demands of commerce.
The charcoal consumed per ton in smelting costs about eleven cents per bushel. For reducing a ton of the best ore about a hundred and ten bushels are required; for a ton of the poorest about a hundred and forty bushels, giving an average of $13 per ton. The cost of mining is, as has already been stated, about $2 per ton. To this must be added furnace-labor, interest on capital employed, insurance, freight, commission, making the total cost about $35 a ton. As the iron commands the highest price in the market, it will be seen that the iron companies of Lake Superior are having an enormous income.
Some men who purchased land at government price are on the high road to fortune. One man entered eighty acres of land, which now nets him twenty-four thousand dollars per annum!
A railroad runs due west from Marquette, gaining by steep gradients the general level of the ridge between Superior and Michigan. It is called the Marquette and Ontonagon Railroad, and will soon form an important link in the great iron highway across the continent. It is about twenty miles from Marquette to the principal mines, which are also reached by rail from Escanaba, on Green Bay, a distance of about seventy miles.
The ore is generally found in hills ranging from one to five hundred feet above the level of the surrounding country. The elevations can hardly be called mountains; they are knolls rather. They are iron warts on Dame Nature's face. They are partially covered with earth, — the slow-forming deposits of the alluvial period.
There are five varieties of ore. The most valuable is what is called the specular hematite, which chemically is known as a pure anhydrous sesquioxide. This ore yields about sixty-five per cent of pure iron. It is sometimes found in conjunction with red quartz, and is then known as mixed ore.
The next in importance is a soft hematite, resembling the ores of Pennsylvania and Connecticut. It is quite porous, is more easily reduced than any other variety, and yields about fifty per cent of pure iron.
The magnetic ores are found farther west than those already described. The Michigan, Washington, Champion, and Edwards mines are all magnetic. Sometimes the magnetic and specular lie side by side, and it is a puzzle to geologists and chemists alike to account for the difference between them. As yet we are not able to understand by what subtle alchemy the change has been produced.
Another variety is called the silicious hematite, which is more difficult of reduction than the others. It varies in richness, and there is an unlimited supply.
The fifth variety is a silicious hematite found with manganese, which, when mixed with other ores, produces an excellent quality of iron. Very little of this ore has been mined as yet, and its relative value is not ascertained.
The best iron cannot be manufactured from one variety, but by mixing ores strength and ductility both are obtained. England sends to Russia and Sweden for magnetic ores to mix with those produced in Lancashire, for the manufacture of steel. The fires of Sheffield would soon go out if the manufactures in that town were dependent on English ore alone. The iron-masters there could not make steel good enough for a blacksmith's use, to say nothing of that needed for cutlery, if they were cut off from foreign magnetic ores.
Here, at Lake Superior, those necessary for the production of the best of steel lie side by side. A mixture of the hematite and magnetic gives a metal superior, in every respect, to any that England can produce.
This one fact settles the question of the future of this region. It is to become one of the great iron-marts of the world. It is to give, by and by, the supremacy to America in the production of steel.
It is already settled, by trial, that every grade of iron now in use in arts and manufactures can be produced here at Lake Superior by mixing the various ores.
The miners are a hardy set of men, rough, uncouth, but enterprising. They live in small cottages, make excellent wages, drink whiskey, and rear large families. How happens it that in all new communities there is such an abundance of children? They throng every doorway, and by every house we see them tumbling in the dirt. Nearly every woman has a child in her arms.
We cannot expect to see the refinements and luxuries of old communities in a country where the stumps have not yet been cleared from the streets, and where the spruces and hemlocks are still waving above the cottages of the settlers, but here are the elements of society. These hard-handed men are developing this region, earning a livelihood for themselves and enriching those who employ them. Towns are springing into existence. We find Ishpeming rising out of a swamp. Imagine a spruce forest standing in a bog where the trees are so thick that there is hardly room enough for the lumbermen to swing their axes, the swamp being a stagnant pool of dark-colored water covered with green slime!
An enterprising town-builder purchased this bog for a song, and has laid out a city. Here it is, — dwelling-houses and stores standing on posts driven into the mud, or resting on the stumps. He has filled up the streets with the débris from the mines. Frogs croak beneath the dwellings, or sun themselves on the sills. The town is not thus growing from the swamp because there is no solid land, but because the upland has exhaustless beds of iron ore beneath, too valuable to be devoted to building purposes.
I have seen few localities so full of promise for the future, not this one little spot in the vicinity of Marquette, but the entire metallic region between Lake Superior and Lake Michigan.
Look at the locality! It is half-way across the continent. Lake Michigan laves the southern, Superior the northern shore, while the St. Lawrence furnishes water-carriage to the Atlantic. A hundred and fifty miles of rail from Bayfield will give connection with the navigable waters of the Mississippi. Through this peninsula will yet lie the shortest route between the Atlantic and Pacific. Westward are the wheat-fields of the continent, to be peopled by an industrious and thriving community. There is no point more central than this for easy transportation.
Here, just where the future millions can be easiest served, exhaustless deposits of the best ore in the world have been placed by a Divine hand for the use and welfare of the mighty race now beginning to put forth its energies on this western hemisphere.
Towns, cities, and villages are to arise amid these hills; the forests and the hills themselves are to disappear. The product, now worth seventeen millions of dollars per annum, erelong will be valued at a hundred millions.
I think of the coming years when this place will be musical with the hum of machinery; when the stillness of the summer day and the crisp air of winter will be broken by the songs of men at work amid flaming forges, or at the ringing anvil. From Marquette, and Bayfield, and Ontonagon, and Escanaba, from every harbor on these inland seas, steamers and schooners, brigs and ships, will depart freighted with ore; hither they will come, bringing the products of the farm and workshop. Heavily loaded trains will thunder over railroads, carrying to every quarter of our vast domain the metals manufactured from the mines of Lake Superior.
We have but to think of the capabilities of this region, its extent and area, the increase of population, the development