THE AGE OF STEEL 



fill the yawning compartments with the necessary 

 six, eight, or nine thousand tons, that make up the 

 cargo. 



Quite recently lake-navigators have learned, what 

 rivermen have long known, that cheap transportation 

 may be effected on a large scale by barges and towing. 

 Before the outbreak of the Civil War forty years ago, 

 the Mississippi river swarmed with great cargo-car- 

 rying steamers, employing armies of men and consuming 

 enormous quantities of fuel. But after the war the 

 experiment was tried of hauling the cargoes on barges 

 towed by tug boats, and this proved to be so much 

 cheaper that the fleet of great river boats soon dis- 

 appeared. In somewhat the same way the barge has 

 come into use of late years in the ore-traffic, and the 

 great ore-steamers now tow behind them one or two 

 barges equal in carrying capacity to themselves. In 

 this way three ships' cargoes of ore are transported a 

 thousand miles by a score of men, a dozen on the steamer 

 and three or four on each of the barges. The barges 

 themselves are rigged as ships, and if necessary can 

 shift for themselves by means of sails attached to their 

 stubby masts. But these are used only on special 

 and unusual occasions, as in case of accidental part- 

 ing of the hawsers during a storm. 



The problem of loading the ships at the ore 

 wharves is a simple one as compared with the equally 

 important one of transferring the ore from the hold 

 to trains of cars in waiting at the eastern end of the 

 water route. For four handlings of the ore are nec- 

 essary before it is finally deposited in the furnaces in 



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