THE MINING OF IRON 8s 



feet, and in order wholly to remove this stratum of earth and 

 boulders, stripping operations on a gigantic scale are resorted to. 



Winter holds the iron lands m its grasp during so great a 

 portion of the year that the men who are engaged upon the 

 stripping work have a comparatively brief season of activity. 

 Nor is their work fraught with any particular danger, save 

 that which is always present where large bodies of men are 

 wielding edged tools. It is when the earthen blanket has been 

 torn off, and the great mass of ore, hundreds of feet deep, lies 

 spread out awaiting the shovelers, that the risks of the iron 

 miner's calling begin to present themselves. 



The ore must be shaken up ahead of the shovels by the 

 liberal use of powder, and in this necessity for the constant 

 use of explosives is found probably the greatest of the dangers 

 to be braved by the iron miner. For blasting purposes holes 

 several inches in diameter are driven to a depth of many feet 

 by means of pointed steel bars. The dropping of a stick of 

 dynamite serves to enlarge one of these tiny tunnels to pretty 

 fair proportions, and then five or six kegs of black powder are 

 poured in, and there is an explosion which loosens sufhcient 

 ore to feed the industrious shovel for some little time. To 

 illustrate what a frightful rending of the earth is constantly 

 in progress in the mining region, it may be noted that even a 

 moderate sized mine will consume, on an average, thirty five 

 kegs of powder a day. 



The tremendous demand for iron which has developed 

 during the last few years has worked many surprises in the 

 Lake Superior country. Old stock piles, discarded, because 

 the ore was only of mediocre quality, so long ago that young 

 forest trees were growing on the dumps, were hastily shoveled 

 into cars; mines abandoned because their yield was only mod- 

 erate, just as the youngster hunting wild flowers is constantly 

 attracted by the wealth of new beds just be^^ond, were re- 

 opened; and, finally, novel schemes have been resorted to in 

 order to enable the miner to secure ore formerly supposed to 

 be inaccessible. On the Menominee range, for instance, the 

 Iron river, a stream of considerable size, is being turned from 

 its present course over a promising bed of ore into another 

 channel some distance away. 



