84 WALDON FAWCETT 



immense number of men employed, the mad rush to grasp 

 every possible ton of treasure within a somewhat limited in- 

 terval of operations, and the extensive scale on which the 

 whole enterprise is conducted, may have something to do with 

 it. Finally, in cataloguing the charms of this great fountain 

 head of the iron industry, it will not do to reckon without the 

 fascination which phenomenal success exerts over the keen, 

 alert American mind. When the visitor to northern Michigan, 

 for instance, is told that he is in the very maelstrom of an in- 

 dustry that is growing at the rate of nearly twenty per cent 

 every twelvemonth— a business the gross receipts of which 

 are bounding upward by two million dollar steps annually in 

 this one state alone— he is apt to share, to some extent, in 

 that enthusiasm which enables the iron operators to work 

 day and night over plans to increase production during the 

 months when other folks are lazying through their summer 

 vacations. 



Some remarkable achievements have been placed to the 

 credit of these workers in the northern wilderness. As an 

 example of the rapidity with which mines can be made, there 

 might be cited the case of a property opened near the town of 

 Virginia in Minnesota a year or two since. In less than two 

 months after ground was broken a working shaft had been 

 constructed a considerable distance into the ore, and a second 

 was well under way, machinery had been purchased and was 

 on the ground, a railroad had been surveyed to provide an 

 outlet for the product of the mine, and a small stock pile of 

 the raw material had begun to accumulate. Possibly more 

 wonderful still is the fact that during the very first season 

 the owners sold from this mine over a hundred thousand tons 

 of ore, receiving for it a sum which enabled them to show a 

 profit not only upon the mining, but upon the opening of the 

 property as well. 



Even on the Mesabi range, where the boast is made that 

 to get ore it is only necessary to shovel it up, there is much to 

 be done before the big steam shovels can be set to work scoop- 

 ing up the red mass. The coverlet of earth which covers the 

 ore bed may have, in some places, a thickness of only a few 

 feet; but in others the depth of soil may reach thirty or forty 



