INDUSTRY'S GREATEST ASSET— STEEL 



125 



AN OLD SALT S OPINION 



These ore ships are a story in them- 

 selves. They remind us of the exclama- 

 tions of an old Cape Cod salt who beheld 

 one for the first time: "Now clap your 

 eyes on that ! D'ye call that a ship ? 

 Why, I'm telling you a loggy lighter with 

 a tenement-house on one end and a match 

 factory on t'other would look better'n 

 that rum-looking craft. How'd the skip- 

 per, and the chief engineer ever get ac- 

 quainted ? And what if one of 'em wants 

 a chew of tobaccer from t'other? And 

 you say the skipper bunks in the skys'l 

 fo'c'stle forward while the cook and 

 ship's boy has the quarterdeck? Well, I 

 wouldn't ship as rope yarn on such a 

 bloody drogher !" 



The big freighters do in general outline 

 fit the old salt's sketchy description. 

 Some of them are more than 600 feet 

 long and only 60 feet beam. With offi- 

 cers' quarters and bridge in the bow and 

 crew's quarters and engine-room in the 

 stern, and all of the rest of the ship with- 

 out superstructure of any kind, and with 

 a flat deck with hatches spaced six feet 

 apart, a salt-water sailor might well re- 

 gard them as uncanny apparitions of the 

 unsalted seas. The William P. Snyder, 

 Jr., 617 feet long and 64 feet beam, draw- 

 ing about 20 feet 6 inches of water, when 

 loaded to capacity, broke the world's bulk 

 freighter record in 1916, carrying 13,694 

 tons of ore on one trip. 



These big ships, in spite of the fact 

 that they are able to work only eight 

 months and notwithstanding the wonder- 

 fully low ton-mile freight rate they offer, 

 are veritable gold mines. With the prog- 

 ress in the art of bulk freighter construc- 

 tion that a quarter of a century has 

 brought forth, miracles of efficiency have 

 been wrought. Vessels of the largest 

 type are operated today with engines of 

 the same pattern and power as were fitted 

 into ships of one-third their tonnage two 

 decades ago. Indeed, so economical in 

 operation are the big ore carriers of to- 

 day that they use only a shade more than 

 half an ounce of coal in carrying a ton 

 of freight a mile — a statement so remark- 

 able that one could not believe it except 

 upon the authority of R. D. Williams, 

 editor of the Marine Review. Another 



authority puts the cost of operating such 

 a ship at between $200 and $300 a day. 

 Even at the latter figure and ten days 

 to the trip, with cargo only one way, the 

 cost of a trip to the owners is only $3,000, 

 while the receipts were $6,000 last year, 

 and at this year's rate will be $10,000. 

 But even at a dollar a ton, moving ore a 

 thousand miles in these vessels costs only 

 one-sixth as much per ton-mile as mov- 

 ing it on the railroads. 



PROCTOR KNOTT'S UNMEANT PROPHECY 



As one stands at Duluth today and sees 

 the endless procession of ships that glide 

 down the lakes, with their cargoes of po- 

 tential steel and promised victory, and 

 then reflects upon the picture the great 

 satirist, Knott, drew of the state of the 

 nation, in the event of a foreign war, 

 without Duluth and "the prolific pine 

 thickets of the St. Croix," there comes a 

 realization of how the jest of yesterday 

 may be the solemn truth of today. 

 Without the iron and steel and wheat of 

 the region he joked about, we might in 

 very truth come to find all our ports 

 blockaded ; all of our cities in a state of 

 siege ; the gaunt specter of famine brood- 

 ing like a hungry vulture over our land. 



It is hard for the mind to grasp what 

 the iron ranges of the Lake Superior re- 

 gion have meant to us. They give the 

 nation all but one-sixth of its iron and 

 steel, and made possible until a few short 

 months ago the production of a pound of 

 iron at a cost of less than three-fourths 

 of a cent. Our railroads, our steamship 

 lines, our factories, all the things that 

 make America potentially the strongest 

 nation on God's green earth, draw their 

 life from the iron ranges. Last year 

 they contributed enough ore to make a 

 wall around the United States a yard 

 thick and 8 feet high. Since they were 

 first opened up they have supplied enough 

 ore to inclose the country with an ore 

 pile of natural slope with a base wider 

 than the road-bed of a standard double- 

 tracked railroad. 



One senses something of this vast traffic 

 as, stopping for a day at the Soo locks, 

 he sees that wonderful procession of ore 

 carriers sweeping down through the great 

 ship stairs and back again, as if they were 



