CIVIC GROWTH - 425 them, a man named John, happened to be in hiding near Oberlin in 1858. A Federal agent named Anderson Jennings was sent to seize and return him. He found his man, and started south with him, when he ran into a large mob in Wellington which rescued the slave and turned him loose. Indictments were brought against twenty-seven prominent citizens, accused of complicity in the slave's liberation, and they were brought to Cleveland for trial in the United States court. There was tremendous interest and excitement. The case was regarded as of national importance. Simeon Bushnell was the first to be tried. Judge H. V. Wilson presided. George W. Beldon was the prosecuting attorney, with George Bliss as assistant. The prisoner, charged formally with "rescuing a fugitive from service," was defended by a battery of able lawyers, R. P. Spalding, F. T. Backus (whose name is carved on the front of the Western Reserve Law School) , A. G. Riddle and S. 0. Griswold. The trial lasted for ten days. There was a clear case against the defendant, and the only possible verdict was "guilty." Bushnell was given the stiff sentence of $600 fine and sixty days in the county jail. Most of his fellow-malefactors suffered somewhat milder penalties and some were dismissed. The net result, as far as Cleveland was concerned, was a greater indignation against slavery and a greater unwillingness to uphold it in any form. The national election of 1860, with its high-running passions and Lincoln's victory, swept away nearly all the remaining tolerance for human bondage. But there remained one last lesson to nerve Cleveland for the coming struggle. An escaped mulatto girl named Lucy was seized on January 19, 1861, by a United States marshal in the home of L. A. Benton on Prospect Street. She was claimed by William S. Goshorn of Wheeling, Virginia, and lodged in the county jail. A large mob gathered, threatening to free her by force. A prominent law firm applied for a writ of habeas corpus, and on January 21 Probate Judge Tilden ordered her release on the technical ground that the sheriff, as an officer of the county, had no right to hold her. She was promptly seized 426 - THIS CLEVELAND OF OURS again by the United States marshal, with the aid of 150 special deputies, and taken to the Federal Building for a hearing 'before United States Commissioner White. There was nothing to do under the existing Federal laws but to award the girl to her owner. Sympathetic Clevelanders tried to buy her freedom, and offered double her market value, but her owner seemed to feel that he, too, represented an important principle. Ignoring all appeals, he got her to a train under the protection of an armed guard and conveyed her safely to Virginia. That was the last slave returned from the North under the fugitive slave law. Three weeks later Abraham Lincoln passed through Cleveland on his way to Washington for inauguration. The city was alive with flags. Thirty thousand people met him and marched in a storm escorting him to his hotel. The city at last was of one mind. In a few weeks more came the call to arms, and in two days the Cleveland Grays marched off, the first northern volunteer unit to respond. The war had begun. It is a story which has been told many times in print, and need not be repeated here. The greatest civil conflict in history is now a faint memory, made remote and unreal by lapse of time, obliteration of the issue, extinction of participants and interposition of the World war. One link with the war that saved the Union and destroyed slavery still remains. New generations that find nothing vital in the Civil war story of their school text books may have the conflict revitalized for them by the neglected Soldiers' and Sailors' Monument on the Public Square. End of the War.—After these scattered glimpses of the varied activities of three decades it is time for another brief stock-taking. The most fundamental characteristics of the city seem to have been developed and given direction during this era, between the collapse of the financial and real estate boom in 1837 and the close of the Civil war. Except for new discoveries and inventions, an economist or sociologist might have charted pretty well the future course of Cleveland. It CIVIC GROWTH - 427 had become a city of varied industries, of bold enterprise, of civic consciousness, of business leadership, of deepening and widening desire for education and culture, with a distinct New England tradition and character, and with more than usual capacity for public and private cooperation. It was forging ahead steadily in wealth, population and influence, the metropolis of the Connecticut Western Reserve, dominating Northern Ohio economically and reckoned as one of the most promising cities of the "West." CHAPTER XII CLEVELAND BUSINESS IN 1865 It would be a good exercise of imagination to try projecting the Cleveland of 1865 as much as fifty or sixty years into the future, on the assumption that it would be a future without new and greater finds of Superior ore, and without new steel processes, petroleum, electricity and automobiles. So extensive have become the city's interests and pursuits that it is no longer feasible to gather them all up into a page or two of type. Moreover, this story is narrowing down somewhat into a special study of economic streams of development following the [Civil] war. It may suffice, then, to show the business status of Cleveland at this point, when the beaten and impoverished South was facing the struggle of reconstruction, and the North, with vigor scarcely impaired, was ready to turn its energies into new channels. It is remarkable how little Cleveland, economically, seems to have suffered from the war, despite her sacrifices of life and money. Growth in nearly every direction had continued strongly and steadily through the early '60s, as it had through the '50s. Thus the local Board of Trade, presenting in 1866 its first complete summary of Cleveland business for the previous year, gave these figures : Value of iron ore trade for the year, $1,179,000. Volume of coal shipped, 465,550 tons. Value of pig iron and scrap, $1,051,000. Pig iron handled by Cleveland firms, $1,450,000. Value of wrought iron products, $6,000,000. Invested in blast furnaces, rolling mills, forges, foundries and factories, $3,000,000. Receipts of lumber, 84,038,000 feet; shingles, 54,744,000; lath, 14,153,000; cedar posts, 50,000. - 428 - CIVIC GROWTH - 429 Hide and leather goods, $1,500,000. Petroleum refineries, 30; capital, $1,500,000; production value, $4,500,000. Clothing made and sold, nearly $3,000,000. Sales of boots and shoes, $1,250,000. Banks' capital, $2,250,000; deposits, $3,700,000. Steam engines, boilers and oil stills manufactured, $500,000. Railroad cars manufactured, $500,000. Number of stoves manufactured, 18,000. Agricultural implements, $350,000. Woodenware, $225,000. Planing mills, $250,000. Barrels made, 200,000. Shingles made, 15,600,000. Furniture, $600,000. Carriages, $200,000. Refined copper produced, 1,500 tons. Paper, $215,000. Woolens, $350,000. Marble and stone works, $400,000. White lead, 600 tons. Lard oil, 50,000 gallons. Stearine candles, 547,000 pounds. Flour, 212,000 barrels. Cigars, $600,000. Gas produced, 43,000,000 cubic feet; coke, 90,000 bushels. Malting and brewing, $800,000. Iron and wooden bridges built, 57, valued at $505,000. Lightning rods, $131,000. Burr millstones, $75,000. Powder made, 20,000 kegs. Bricks made, 7,000,000. Hats and caps, $50,000. Wines and liquors estimated at $2,098,000. Groceries, $4,840,000. Hardware, $1,417,000; carpets, $230,000; crockery and glassware, $610,000; furniture, $600,000; jewelry, $375,000; 430 - THIS CLEVELAND OF OURS books, etc., $800,000; harness and trunks, $200,000; ship stores, $200,000; sewing machines, $250,000; shipbuilding, $300,000; drugs, $913,000; railroad receipts, $10,500,000; telegraph and express receipts, $600,000; miscellaneous business, $51,000,000. Here was proof of industrial variety, business flexibility, resistless push in many directions, firm faith in the city's future! SECTION VII STEEL Chapter I. Introduction Chapter II. Iron Ore Chapter III. Shipping Chapter IV. Coal Chapter V. Manufacturing SECTION VII STEEL CHAPTER I INTRODUCTION "Roads come, farms are tilled, grain goes to market—because of iron. "Ships move, trains run, automobiles travel, airplanes fly—because of iron. "Cities grow, factories are built, men find work—because of iron. "No other metal is so valuable to the needs of people; and when the day comes for the recording of the widening history of man, the development of the iron mines in the Superior Country will hold more historical attention than the destructive sweep of a Genghis Khan." —Norman Beasley in "Freighters of Fortune." The end of the Civil war, like the end of every other war in our history, brought a vast release of human energies. The nation began a new expansion similar to that which followed the Revolution, but greater in extent because its powers were greater and the field of operation was more extensive. There came a new and far larger wave of western migration. National resources had scarcely been touched. There were rich farm lands for countless millions. There were apparently inexhaustible forests. There were mineral lands whose wealth could only be dimly suspected. The American people turned from human strife to the conquest of a continent. In this outburst of energy the infant Iron Age matured as the Age of Steel, of which Cleveland became the heart. It was an era of great railroad-building, in which local lines scattered throughout the East and Middle West were woven into systems, and new ventures carried trunk lines, with state and Federal aid, from the Mississippi Valley to the Pacific. The Great Lakes began coming into their own, with a notable development of traffic. Coal, essential to steel, flowed from the mines of Ohio, Pennsylvania and West Virginia in ever-increasing volume. Iron ore deposits in the - 433 - 434 -THIS CLEVELAND OF OURS Northwest, heretofore little known and barely touched, were found to be the largest in the world and the most easily worked and transported. Shipping responded with an unparalleled growth, as coal and iron were shuttled up and down the Lakes. Furnaces, mills and factories sprang up magically. Lake Superior, "the great, cold lake that sits so strangely in a rim of iron," became an adjunct of Lake Erie, and the rich Superior region a suburban area of Cleveland. Our city began to dominate the Great Lakes as Carthage dominated the Mediterranean before it was crushed by Roman militarism, and as Venice dominated it at the beginning of modern times. For this reason the romantic story of Superior ore is a vital part of the story of Cleveland. CHAPTER II IRON ORE "There is a romance about iron. I wonder if the courageous men who seek it in the bowels of the earth realize their big part in the life of the world. Do the brave, bare bodies, that reflect the furnace light and the floating glow of the smelter, do their work because of a subtle subconsciousness of the fact that the wheels of the world and civilization would stop if they stopped? "Iron and steel are of greater importance than wheat, because there are many good substitutes for wheat. There is none for iron ore. It has a glory and usefulness all its own. Those who are associated with its production should know of the dignity of their calling; should realize it, and then their hearts and souls would-fill their big bodies until brawn and spirit are one, as an instrument of the joy of existence in the keen sense of service. There would be a brotherhood of iron that could not know strife if the totality of the performance could be shown to the eyes of all those who inhabit the world of steel." —Chase Salmon Osborn in De Kruif's "Seven Iron Men." American iron was first mined in Virginia, before the Pilgrims landed at Plymouth Rock, more than three centuries before the Superior iron rush which made Cleveland great. The first ores brought to the city came from Pennsylvania and New York. The Cornwall mines near Lebanon, Pa., then the richest known on the continent, were worked for 150 years and yielded 19,000,000 tons. The best mines in the Empire State were at Port Henry on Lake Champlain, producing 15,000,000 tons in the last century. Between them they supplied the national demand until the Civil war. A new and ample source was found when needed. Men were first lured to the Superior region by its furs, next by its copper and timber. The greatest source of wealth, as usual, was unsuspected. Copper was the chief attraction, as it had been for centuries. That mineral, invaluable as it proved to be in quality and quantity, and essential to the ap- - 435 - 436 - THIS CLEVELAND OF OURS proaching age of electricity and metallic alloys, has small part in the Cleveland story. It is referred to here briefly because it was copper that served as a bait for iron discoveries. Deposits of solid copper had been worked by the Indians, on Lake Superior islands and on the mainland, and were probably known to their predecessors. There have been discovered prehistoric mine workings where the roofs were shored with timbers almost in the modern manner, and blocks of solid metal weighing tons had been moved from their original position and abandoned on their way to the surface. Cartier in the sixteenth century learned of "red copper" rudely mined for arrow heads and domestic utensils. Champlain was told of great deposits near a big water, and saw some in the possession of an Algonquin chief. The Indians gathered the almost pure ore in lumps, melted or softened it in their wood fires and worked it with stones. French records tell of a carpenter who saw, on the river "Tonnagane," later known as the "Ontonagon," famous for its copper and sturgeon, fifty layers of copper outcropping on a hillside, one above another, each several inches thick. The voyageurs and Jesuits wrote of copper. Germans and Englishmen knew about it in the eighteenth century. But there was little definite knowledge. The expedition led by Lewis Cass, governor of the Northwest Territory, in 1820, ascended the Ontonagon River but failed to find the copper. But soon the copper prospectors were swarming up the Sault Ste. Marie into Lake Superior in their birch bark batteaux—open boats with paddles and sails, which followed the coast and went ashore at night. Others came overland with packs and picks, attracted by a report of the first Michigan state geologist, Douglas Houghton, a former mayor of Detroit. Many died of cold and starvation. Houghton himself was drowned in Lake Superior. The rich deposits eluded them. But the quest continued. The first commercial discovery is said to have been made by John Hays of Cleveland, representing a group in Pittsburgh, where he had formerly lived. His qualifications as a mining prospector were those of a druggist. On an expedi- STEEL - 437 tion in 1843 and 1844 he discovered Cliff Mine near Eagle River, inland from Cat Harbor. This was the first mine found in the Superior Country that yielded pure, native copper, and its ore specimens created a sensation everywhere. The next year he found a mass of copper weighing 3,100 pounds, at the foot of a cliff. Similar blocks of ore were sent a little later to England, where they amazed the metallurgists. Pure, solid copper was unknown in Europe. There were many rumors of iron. The Indians knew of its existence, but were unable to work it themselves and hesitated to reveal it to the white man. A Chippewa chief, Marji Gesick, whose name is spelled in many ways, is given credit for the first practical and intentional iron discovery, made in 1845. In the previous year an interesting scientific gentleman named William A. Burt, employed as United States deputy surveyor, was engaged in a survey of the Upper Peninsula. He was the inventor of a solar compass, an ingenious instrument which enabled him to run true lines regardless of local magnetic variations, and on this trip he was delighted with the serviceability of his instrument. He had much need of it. Never had he observed such undependability in the behavior of the ordinary compass. When he noticed in one place that the needle was fluctuating 87 degrees, he knew well enough what must have caused it, and told his men to look around. They found iron cropping out everywhere. They could kick the sod with their toes and turn up ore. But it interested them as surveyors, not prospectors. To their leader the ore was merely another scientific fact. Naturally they talked about it on their return to civilization at Jackson, Mich., but the news caused no excitement. The region was inaccessible. If it had been gold or silver, or even copper—but merely iron ! Two men, however, and those men Indians, were interested. Presumably they had served as guides to the surveyors. They had been told about the iron discovery. One was Chief Marji Gesick and the other was a half-breed named Louis Nolan. A third party was P. M. Everett, an enterpris- 438 - THIS CLEVELAND OF OURS ing citizen of Jackson, on whom the story had not been lost. When he came up to the Soo in the spring of '45, Nolan offered to show him the ore, but lost his way. Then came Gesick, who took him unerringly almost to the place, then stopped from fear of the spirit who lived in the iron mountain. The chief drew a rude map on the ground, by the aid of which Everett and his party were successful. They found hills of solid ore on Carp River, twelve miles inland from Copper Harbor, 300 miles from the "Soo." One of the hills they called "Jackson Mountain." Another was later named "Cleveland Mountain." The next year the party revisited their discovery and returned with 300 pounds of ore on their backs. They organized the Jackson Mining Company. Cleveland also appeared on that scene in 1846, in the person of Dr. J. Lang Cassels, a competent mineralogist, who was sent into the peninsula by a local syndicate to report on its mineral resources. He secured a location. It was the men interested in this venture who subsequently organized the Cleveland Iron Company, leading to iron exploitation on a big scale. Everett was determined to prove his ore and make iron in that wilderness. By tremendous exertion he succeeded in bringing in tools and materials on pack horses, and built a rude forge. It was midwinter before he was ready for operations. Working in deep snow and a bitter wind, with the temperature below zero, he assembled his ore, charcoal and limestone, started his fire, worked the bellows, and proceeded to forge the first bloom from Superior ore. It was a piece of iron two feet long and four inches square. There was no more question now about the ore. Iron made there that same winter was sold to make a walking beam for a steamship. But Everett suffered the usual fate of pioneers. His forge was swept away by a spring freshet. He rebuilt it on a bigger scale, and made iron right along for a while to the extent of several tons a day, but was finally beaten by bad roads. An iron forge could not be operated long in such a wilderness, on supplies packed in on the backs of men or horses. The infant industry needed transportation. The STEEL - 439 enterprise failed, the investors lost. But it was a beginning of great things. There were others now who saw the possibilities of Superior iron. Prospecting continued and spread. Claims were staked over large areas. Eastern capital became interested. The tiny fishing and trading village of Marquette began to grow. In 1849 the Marquette Iron Company, of historic interest to Cleveland, was organized to operate in this district. It claimed the ownership of the Cleveland location, two miles from the Jackson mine, and in the winter of 1850 hauled out the first ore, mined the previous summer. In a land without roads, ore could be hauled only over frozen ground. In 1852 was shipped to Cleveland the first ore this city received from Superior, half a dozen barrels in the steamer Baltimore. How little demand there was at the time for ore on the lower Lakes may be seen from the fact that when another company shortly afterward, shipped a small cargo to a Cleveland concern, and the latter was unable or unwilling to pay the freight, the cargo was not considered worth the transportation charges. Meanwhile there had been organized the Cleveland Iron Mining Company, bringing into the field a strong group of Cleveland capitalists, among them Samuel L. Mather, John Outhwaite and Morgan L. Hewitt. It proceeded to explore for ore and buy lands in the Marquette district. In 1850 it became the Cleveland Cliffs Iron Company. It took over the Marquette Iron Company in 1853, by virtue of its previous claim, paying for the improvements, and also acquired the old Jackson mine, wedding "Cleveland Mountain" to "Jackson Mountain." Along with the property, the Cleveland company took over a bright and sturdy young fellow named Peter White, who had been keeping store for the outfit, and who became so great a figure in the Superior region that he is now a legendary hero. Good news came back up the Lakes from those first, tentative ore shipments. The Cleveland ore, tested in a blast furnace at Sharon, then smelting locally mined ores, was reported to yield the almost impossible figure of "fully 80 per 440 - THIS CLEVELAND OF OURS cent of metal." Even if that percentage was an error, there could be no doubt of the ore's value. "This," said Gen. J. P. Curtis of the Sharon Iron Company, "settles the question as to the matter of converting the ore, and calls for a road at once. There are furnaces built now on the canals, on the Cleveland and Erie, to use all the ore we can mine." Development seemed slow. Yet in 1854 there were 1,000 tons of ore hauled in wagons down through the hills to Marquette, loaded onto boats, unloaded at the Soo and hauled past the rapids, loaded again into boats, brought to Cleveland and distributed to furnaces in Ohio and Pennsylvania. Some of it was mixed with local ores to make nails and bar iron. But soon it was standing on its own merits. In that year an iron strap railroad was built from the mines to the future ore-port at Marquette, replacing a primitive plank road. In that year, too, came W. J. Gordon, Cleveland capitalist, to the iron region, seeing the possibilities at once, and declaring : "The world can scarcely realize the wonderful deposits of iron in our hills without the aid of actual personal observation. It is incredible." And the next year the canal was opened past St. Mary's Rapids at the Soo, enabling cargoes to move down the Lakes without trans-shipment. Water transportation was the breath of life to the ore country. On that depended its distant market, its population and its business prosperity. The Cleveland Iron Mining Company had acquired, with its mines, most of the land On which the city of Marquette was subsequently built, and most of which was sold eventually by Peter White. At its docks on the Carp River, a few miles downstream from the spot where P. M. Everett had set up his primitive forge, this resolution was read on a gala day in 1851, in celebrating the appearance of the Manhattan, first steamer to reach the town and built for operation on Lake Superior : "Resolved that in our opinion Marquette will become a place of business and resort sufficient to warrant its being made a stopping place by all boats on their upward as well as their downward trips, and that the time is not far distant when commercial business growing out of these rich and in- STEEL - 441 exhaustible mountains of iron will alone require more shipping than at this time floats upon this lake. "Resolved that in our estimation those iron companies who have been pioneers in operation here, and who have had incredible and unforeseen difficulties, disappointments and misfortunes to grapple with, are deserving of a favorable and fostering consideration, and it is a source of much gratification that the smoke of their fires and clink of their hammers give evidence that days and years of prosperity are in store for them." So much for one small steamer cooped up in that "iron rim" ! Two years later the task was started to give the greatest of our inland seas outlet and inlet for navigation. The Sault Ste. Marie was intended by Nature for greatness, like the Hellespont, Suez, Panama and the Detroit River. These are great crossroads where important land routes and water routes meet. As far back as records and tradition go, there has always been a settlement at the Soo, for fishing and trading. Thence were derived many of Longfellow's "Hiawatha" songs. Its potential importance as a link in the Great Lakes system was recognized long before modern commerce clamored for passage. The Indians could shoot the rapids downstream and portage upstream, but the whites even in batteau days visioned heavy freight. In the early years of development all the supplies and materials upward bound had to be portaged through to Lake Superior, and all the ore coming down suffered the same handicap. The first steamers launched in Lake Superior were hauled through on rollers. For several years cargoes were hauled both ways in a one-horse car. When traffic grew too great for its capacity, double teams and wagons were used, rapidly multiplying in number. In 1850 a tram road was built with stables, docks and warehouses at both terminals. But its utmost capacity, working every hour of the day, was 400 tons. It was clear that a canal was soon going to be necessary, and there were excellent examples in the Erie, Ohio and Welland canals. As early as 1837 Governor Mason of Michigan had urged 442 - THIS CLEVELAND OF OURS a canal at the Soo, in fact before it was needed, and a channel 10 feet deep and 75 feet wide was recommended by state engineers, with two locks 100 feet long. Two years later it was authorized by state commissioners. But the commandant of the government's military post there indignantly kicked out the state surveyors, insisting it was folly, and also an insult to his Federal authority, to run the survey lines. The next year the appeal was carried to Congress, but Henry Clay defeated the appropriation bill by the declaration that "it is a work beyond the remotest settlement in the United Sates, if not in the moon." Finally in 1852, coincidentally with the appearance of Clevelanders on the scene, 750,000 acres of public land were granted by Congress for the canal. It was the usual way of paying for public improvements at a time when land was far more plentiful than money. It is a curious fact that almost every big step in the development of the Superior region has been accomplished by some man from whom nothing of the kind might have been expected. Thus the actual credit for the Soo Canal goes to a youthful salesman whose training for this difficult political, financial and engineering task was obtained in selling Fairbanks scales in the effete East. John T. Harvey, aged twenty-four, happened to be sojourning at a Baptist mission at the Soo, recovering from an illness, when he heard of the long-discussed project. Nobody seemed able to get it started. The canal somehow interested him. He wrote to his home office in Vermont insisting that canal locks were more important in that country than scales, and asked for a leave of absence. More remarkable still, he persuaded his firm to help pay for a survey. He studied the problem of lock construction. He got himself commissioned as special agent to select the public lands. Requiring a charter for his proposed construction company, he incorporated in New York the St. Mary's Falls Ship Canal Company. The company he organized, comprising Fairbanks and other eastern capitalists, gave him $50,000 as a starter and told him to go ahead with the hardest engineering job then projected in America. STEEL - 443 So in the summer of 1853 this lad broke ground for his canal, almost coming to grief at once because he dug through an old Indian burying ground. It had been estimated, before Harvey took hold of the job, that the preparations would take three years and the construction ten years. He did it all in less than three. That convalescent New Englander had made the survey and hauled stone in a northwestern winter, with sub-zero blizzards howling around his ears. When the Michigan legislature met in January, he had snowshoed in to demand locks with minimum dimensions of 75 by 350 feet. There was a universal roar. Legislators, engineers and vessel men said he was crazy. The biggest ship owner on the Lakes said : "The crooked, narrow, shallow and rocky channels of the St. Mary's River will forever deter the largest class of steamers from navigating these waters." But the scales salesman won, and proceeded to select the Federal lands donated, having the wit to take rich mineral lands, and then squared away for the real task. The outcome should recommend scales salesmen for engineering jobs everywhere. Terrific obstacles were encountered, natural and human. The rock ledges were unyielding. There were strikes. There were epidemics of malaria, typhoid and cholera. There were endless rows with the Federal engineers supervising the job. A blunder with the cofferdam, caused by their faulty engineering, threatened to pour Lake Superior through the half-finished works and wreck everything. Harvey impudently took control himself, tackled the defective works in mid-winter, improvised tools and methods, finished the job on his own schedule and opened the canal on time for navigation in the spring of 1855. The state took charge of the canal and it was subsequently taken over by the United States government. The first ore cargo through the locks came down the Lakes in the brig Columbia, from the Cleveland Iron Mining Company, which is said to have shipped all the Superior ore that year, totalling 1,449 tons. It came from Marquette to Crawford and Price, Cleveland. The second shipment was by the 444 - THIS CLEVELAND OF OURS schooner George Worthington four days later, 278 tons to Crawford and Price and 60 tons to W. J. Gordon. These were deck loads. The third came by the propeller General Taylor, owned by Hussey and St. Claire of Cleveland, 50 tons. The first sailing vessel to make a complete return trip was the schooner Freeman of Cleveland, captained by J. H. Andrews. Coming down, he merely carried a little ore that had been left at the Soo before the canal was finished. The heroic story of his trip back is told further on in this narrative. Those two locks at the Soo looked capacious enough in that first year of operation. There were many jeers at Harvey's extravagance. Five years later freighters were frequently waiting their turn to get through. In 1860 there were 120,000 tons of ore shipped. War interfered, but the traffic grew. For the time being, however, traffic had a clear way on the water. It was clogging on land. There must be railways to hook up with waterways. Peter White, responsible for getting the ore from the "mountains" to the little, unmechanized dock at Marquette, had insisted on rails from the first. He was not satisfied with the strap road—a horse car line for freight, something like the first Cleveland trolley line running up to the stone quarry on the Heights. It provided a better outlet for ore; and so increased production, but he clamored for a steam road. The winter after the Soo Canal opened, Congress added a land grant to build railroads on the Upper Peninsula. White, supplementing Harvey's work, walked on snowshoes to Escanaba on Green Bay, Wisconsin, took the stage to Fond du Lac, walked the remaining 350 miles to Lansing, the Michigan capital, all in fifteen days, set forth the needs of the iron and copper country and got his projects approved by the Legislature. Peter always had a way with legislators; they would sit up nearly all night to hear his frontier stories, then vote what he wanted next day. Immediately a railroad was constructed where it would do the most good, which was from Marquette up to those inland mines. It was completed in 1857. Other lines followed STEEL - 445 on other strategic routes, with their complementary docks, until there was a direct, unbroken chain of modern transportation from Superior mines to Ohio furnaces and mills. Yes, it was modern, though those freight cars and locomotives and light rails would look like toys today. The ore so far was hard ore, magnetites and hematites. No soft ores were mined until after the war. The ore had to be followed under rock capping, in underground quarries. Methods at first were primitive. Strictly underground mining, when really effective, demands machinery. For this purpose power drills, pumps and hoists came into general use about 1880. Much of the ore during the war period was made into pig iron at Marquette in charcoal furnaces and carried down the Lakes when other freight was lacking. If there were no buyers, the captains would dump it on the docks. When peace was declared, Peter White, realizing that there would be a new demand for the "pigs," got a list of ships that had carried them, and went down the Lakes, stopping at numerous ports and buying up all he found lying about. Then he drifted into the office of the Otis Foundry Company in Cleveland and casually asked Charles A. Otis if he wanted any pig iron. Otis offered him $42 a ton for all he could deliver, and to his amazement White delivered 1,000 tons in a few days. Thus his little trip netted him $36,000. "Charcoal iron" soon rose to $95 a ton, the highest price on record. The story of Superior iron shifts westward, where lay, hardly suspected as yet, deposits vastly greater than any yet touched. The resources of the pioneer Marquette Range itself were yet uncomprehended, and indeed even now are not thoroughly explored. The Menominee Range to the south and Gogebic to the west, completing the iron triangle of the Upper Michigan Peninsula, and probably both greater than the Marquette, were scarcely known. But beyond, in the frozen wilds of Minnesota, lay wealth enormously greater than all of these together. At the western end of the big lake was Duluth, a primitive fishing village, with shacks along the shore and wilderness beyond—rolling hills, forest and muskeg. Fish, 446 - THIS CLEVELAND OF OURS timber and furs were the interests there. They cared nothing about iron. It mattered little. Iron has a way of being found when it is needed. There was still plenty of ore coming south from Marquette, Ishpeming and Negaunee. And just as the Civil war ended, a new outlet was provided in the Peninsula Railroad, running southeast across the Upper Peninsula to Escanaba on Green Bay. Gold was a different matter. There had been tales of gold, too, in the northwest. Even as the last spikes were being driven in that railroad track to Green Bay, a gentleman-adventurer named George R. Stuntz, living in Duluth, started exploring northward toward Vermillion Lake, 100 miles from civilization. Stuntz was an educated Ohio man, a chemist and a surveyor. Though drawn mainly by the lure of gold, he had iron in the back of his mind. He had previously seen something of those northwestern hills, with mineral outcroppings, and thought they might repeat the Marquette formation. So he set off in October, 1865, with a fellow-townsman or two, with Indians for guides, traveling in canoes. The little party moved up the St. Louis River, portaged around its rapids ten miles through the bush, and after nearly 100 miles of paddling, crossed the portage to Pike River, over the Mesabi ridge. They were now in the region of the divide that separates three vast continental drainage systems, the Great Lakes, the Mississippi River and the tributaries of Hudson Bay. It was, as Paul de Kruif calls it, a realm of "misty muskeg, rock and forest, a land where winter is likely to begin in the early autumn, and spring hardly peeps out before the beginning of summer," so cold that there is often ice edging the streams on July mornings. In all that country, from the little foothold of civilization at Duluth up to Hudson Bay, there is said to have been at the time only one white resident. He was an odd character known as Joe Posey, whose main interest in life was teaching the art of blacksmithing to the Indians. He knew of outcroppings in many places. He wanted the Indians to have more STEEL - 447 efficient tools and weapons. He told Stuntz that he would find iron, but no gold. Down Pike River the party paddled, to the southern end of Vermillion Lake, ignoring the Mesabi. They found outcroppings of which Posey had told them, broke off sixty pounds of "beautiful specular hematite," and took it back to Duluth over frozen rivers. But it aroused no enthusiasm. The time had not come. Stuntz turned temporarily to other things. One member of that little gold-rush band was Lewis Howell Merritt, father of the famous Merritt boys who were to play so big a part in subsequent exploration and development. He was an old settler from Ohio, originally of Chautauqua, N. Y., who had come to the west country in 1856. This was not the first time he had searched the wilderness for "fool's gold." He told his sons now that there was iron in the north worth more than all the gold in California. His faith was not confined to the Vermillion Range, which Stuntz had tapped. Either on this trip, or another, in his endless ramblings, Merritt seems to have observed Mesabi iron. There is a story of his bringing home some red ore wrapped in a paper parcel, showing it to his sons in their 'teens, and telling them prophetically of great deposits he believed to exist there. He was sure that modest ridge so grandiosely called "Giant Mountains" was an iron range. "There was bound to be iron all the way along those hills." The boys' imaginations were kindled. To others, it was only fool's iron. The scene shifts back to Michigan and Wisconsin. The Menominee Range, though in the beaten path of travel, and even traversed now by a railroad, had been overlooked as an iron field, because the prospectors expected an iron-bearing formation to resemble the Marquette Range. The region had been stripped of its pine forests and abandoned, with no suspicion of its underlying wealth. Then in 1873 John T. Buell found "blue ore" there. The following year some of it was hauled to the town of Menominee on sleds and wagons, smelted, and found to be practicable. Development thence was rapid and profitable. The ore-bearing strata 448 - THIS CLEVELAND OF OURS were scattered through the northern part of Menominee County and the southern part of Marquette County. With two ranges easily workable and provided with transportation, production rapidly increased, ships multiplied and grew in size, the ore spread an ever-widening stream of wealth. Meanwhile the unknown northwest continued to beckon. In 1869 Peter Mitchell, a sturdy frontiersman, moved by many vague stories of "red earth," persuaded a group of men in Ontonagon to grubstake him for a prospecting tour of the Minnesota country. During the next two years he wandered over the Mesabi Range and the Vermillion district. Again and again he ran across remarkable outcroppings of ore. Obviously there was wealth there awaiting exploitation. Yet when he returned, he met the fate of previous prospectors, disbelief or lack of interest. His ore samples attracted attention. He found valuable lands in 1871 and 1872. But the region was unsurveyed, the deposits were difficult to locate and almost impossible to cover with legal claims. Mineral laws had never applied to the region, because when the land laws were enacted no one suspected that there was any wealth there except the visible timber and soil of dubious agricultural value. Yet a Federal appropriation was obtained, a survey was made, and the Ontonagon group, headed by L. Willard, took up a tract of 10,000 acres. Willard died and the pool ended in 1876. Other lands had been reported on by Mitchell, and had been approved by the famous Prof. Louis Agassiz, who was retained for advice. But actual development was hopelessly slow. Mitchell, like many another Moses of the promised land, failed to realize the promise for himself. Development of the Vermillion field, where the ore was more obvious than in the Mesabi, came first. And here, as so often in the Superior story, the unusual happened. Pioneering is young men's work. Yet the opening of the Vermillion deposits was the achievement of two elderly gentlemen from Pennsylvania, a small manufacturer named George C. Stone, and a capitalist named Charlemagne Tower. Stuntz had not been idle, and other names had come into the story. When his friends failed him, Stuntz went east