IRON MANUFACTURE. 44] 
besides Cleveland, there are several places yet almost unknown as 
manufacturing points, where the facilities of communication with the 
supply of fuel from the coal area and the ores from the lakes seem to 
present very favorable conditions for successful industries, as Paines- 
ville, Ashtabula, Black River, Sandusky and Toledo. At the latter 
place, however, there are already successful enterprises in operation. 
Transportation. 
In the modern manufacture of iron there is hardly any problem of 
greater importance than that of transportation, in the distribution of 
the ores and fuel, and marketing the products. Whether it is more 
economical, in any given case, to carry the ores to the fuel or the fuel 
to the ores, or to establish the manufacture at an intermediate point, are 
questions depending upon so many considerations, as to the relative 
expense of transporting the ore and fuel, cost of labor, the position of 
large manufacturing centers or markets, that they demand the most 
careful investigation before the erection of expensive establishments. 
Before the conception of the vast railroad enterprises of the present 
time, the extensive canal system of Ohio was a subject of just pride to 
its inhabitants. But the railroad, in its rapid extension over the State, 
either by rivalry or by purchase, has reduced these expensive canals, 
with but very small exceptions, to the state of dry ditches, and as means 
of communication they have become things of the past. Though with- 
out any navigable stream within its own limits, Ohio, with the waters 
of the great lakes washing its northern shores, and the broad and 
navigable Ohio bordering its southern limits, has an extent of water 
communication which gives it almost the advantages of a sea-coast. 
By Lake Erie, the great lakes and the St. Lawrence, its vessels may 
pass from Duluth, at the extreme west of Lake Superior, to Quebec and 
the Atlantic Ocean on the east, a distance of 1,500 miles. While by 
the Ohio River it has a ready communication to all the points from 
Pittsburgh to St. Louis, and the Mississippi River to New Orleans, a 
distance of 2,090 miles. All the ores of Lake Superior are shipped 
either at Marquette, on Lake Superior, or from Escanaba, on Green 
Bay, Lake Huron, in barges, sailing vessels or steamers, many of which 
are built especially for the traffic, and as return cargoes they take back 
coal. Owing to the length of the winter in this northern region, 
the traffic lasts but a portion of the year, from about May 1 to Nov. 1. 
