THE MINING OF IRON 83 



ore, which appears Hke nothing so much as loose red earth, is 

 found in great masses on the slopes of hills, and virtually the 

 only task before the mine operator is to scoop it up and load 

 it into the cars standing on the siding, which are run into the 

 pit just as cars might be backed into a stone quarry. 



Out of some of these immense holes in the ground more 

 than a million tons of ore are taken every year, and it is all 

 dipped up by steam shovels, strange, ponderous machines, 

 with muscles of iron, and engine pulsations serving for heart 

 throbs, but which never grow weary or go on strike, but 

 steadily, hour in, hour out, keep at their task, drawing out 

 five tons of the embryo metal at every upward sweep of each 

 giant arm. Each of these steam shovels weighs more than 

 the average locomotive, and costs more than five thousand 

 dollars. 



Ten or a dozen men are required to operate one of these 

 mechanical shovelers, attending to the engine, keeping the 

 fire going, and pressing the levers which send the ungainly 

 looking bucket burrowing into the bank of ore just as the 

 dipper of a dredge might sink into the mud, and the other 

 levers, which call into play the sinews which lift the brimming 

 panful, swing it around, and empty its contents into the wait- 

 ing railroad car. It usually requires five trips before a car is 

 filled, but the whole operation seldom requires more than five 

 minutes, and very frequently a car is loaded and shoved out 

 of the way in two or three minutes. One of these immense 

 iron ore diggings may occupy a plot half a mile square, and 

 the steam shovels travel back and forth as do locomotives in 

 a railroad yard. On the earthen palisades high above them 

 the dynamiters are at work ; and after each blast laborers with 

 pickaxes loosen the ore and let it run down to the shovels. 



The unearthing of iron as conducted in the Lake Superior 

 district may be said, with small fear of contradiction, to be 

 characterized by the presence of the spectacular element to a 

 greater degree than any other form of mining. Not even the 

 hydrauUc method — employed on an extensive scale in the 

 search for gold in some localities — so strikingly embodies the 

 picturesque, and yet combines with it a forceful demonstration 

 of the wonders of modern engineering science. Perhaps the 



