STEEL - 475 The first ore mined was hard hematite or magnetite, quarried in open pits and hillsides, conveyed by tramways and dumped into the cars at the nearest railroad spur. This method continued until the 'seventies. Later, as the pits and tunnels grew deep, inclined roads were used for hoisting cars, serving alike for hard and soft ores. It was obvious that the great opportunity in handling ore was in quantity and speed. The business was therefore mechanized to an unparalleled extent. Getting the Superior ore out of the ground was far easier, on the whole, than any kind of mining had ever been. In the Michigan and Vermillion ranges the under-ground methods of digging were generally used, from necessity; but in some of the mines there, the nature and situation of the ore permitted surface operation. In the later ranges, the Mesabi and Cuyuna, with their uniformly soft ores lying horizontally in basins at or near the surface, it was natural to apply the dredge idea, and thus "steam shovel mining" developed. The covering soil was stripped off, then the bared ore was lifted and poured directly into railroad cars just as if it were so much sand dredged from a lake channel or harbor and poured into a scow. One such machine could do the work of hundreds of men. The first steam shovel, weighing 35 tons, was introduced in the early winter of 1904, after the ground was frozen enough to bear its weight, towed in by two narrow-gauge locomotives. It proved its worth by digging 27,000 tons of ore in the first two months. Its progeny have grown until the machines weigh 300 to 350 tons and one of them can handle 150,000 tons of ore a month. As they move along on their own tracks, their huge dippers, taking six or more cubic yards to a bite and cutting a swath more than 100 feet wide, lift and dump their contents as much as 60 feet above the shovel track, into trains of steel dump cars. As the monster eats its way down through level after level of ore, locomotive cranes are used to shift and lower the tracks. Another type of excavator coming into use is the revolving shovel with an endless chain of buckets, operated by electricity. This giant 476 - THIS CLEVELAND OF OURS can reach down and raise the ore from a depth of 40 feet beneath its own level. Strain and backache are gone from a once arduous occupation. Everything is mechanical. When the ore trains reach the loading docks, the cars are hauled up onto long bridges of steel and concrete, equipped with enormous bins, whose chutes are shaped and spaced to fit the ship hatches. Dropping a train-load into those bins from the dump cars is a simple matter. Still simpler is the opening of the chutes that let the ore down by its own gravity into the vessel moored below. Empty cars roll out of the way, likewise by gravity, and others take their places. Thus the ore-loading rate has risen from less than 100 tons a day to more than 4,000 tons an hour. In the early days the ore cargoes were all loaded and unloaded by hand, the only machinery being a wheelbarrow. Even with labor at twenty-five cents an hour it was an expensive process. It took four days to get three hundred tons of ore onto a schooner, and a week to get it off. Unloading was a particularly difficult problem of mechanization. Eventually some unsung genius, impatient with the primitive methods of shoveling ore from a ship's hold to the deck by means of a series of platforms, rigged up a tub with block and tackle, slung from a boom and operated by a horse, neatly raising the ore and dumping it into the barrows that took it ashore. But with ships growing steadily in size and cost, it was evident the ore handling must be speeded up. In 1867 Bothwell and Ferris, operating the Nypano (Erie) docks in the old river bed at Cleveland, were using forty horses to unload schooners by this tub and barrow system and, with all their horsepower, taking over two days to unload four hundred tons. J. D. Bothwell, watching that everlasting operation, conceived the revolutionary idea of using a portable stevedore engine. There were such engines already in use to operate pile-drivers. He got an engineer to design one for him, and proceeded to try it on the first vessel that appeared. His victim was Capt. Smith Moore of STEEL - 477 the bark Massillon, who "wanted no fooling with any damned toy." But Bothwell persisted, and the toy emptied the 400-ton bark in one day. The new method quickly spread to other docks and was used for fifteen years. That little problem was solved for the time being. Further mechanization awaited larger and more specialized ore ships and greater haste. About 1880 Alexander E. Brown, a mechanical-minded young man employed in the office of his father, Fayette Brown, started working on a system of hoisting and conveying ore by machinery. The first Brown machine was set up on the Erie dock at the foot of Pearl Street (West 25th) near the spot where Bothwell had introduced his iron hoisting-horse. The new device, popularly known as "Old Tom Collins," was a single bucket rigged on a cable running from vessel to dock, filled by hand-shoveling. It was succeeded eventually by a hoisting machine with three working legs which transferred ore directly from the vessels to railroad cars or storage piles, or from storage piles to cars. It was an extremely convenient apparatus, but not of large capacity. From it stem the giant steel stevedores which have brought fame and profit to the Brown Hoisting Machinery Company. A revolving crane for docks, which had a self-dumping attachment and rendered good service, was brought out by the McMyler Manufacturing Company. Ore could now be hoisted rapidly from the holds, but the buckets still had to be filled by hand. The obvious step, a difficult one, was to make them self-filling. This problem was worked out adequately by three different firms, the Wellman-Seaver-Morgan Company of Cleveland, the Brown Hoisting Machinery Company of Cleveland and Hoover & Mason of Chicago. Mason's automatic bucket, with a hoisting tower, filling itself with any kind of ore, has a peculiarly effective movement in closing its blades, different from that of the ordinary clam shell or orange peel type. It has a full spread of eighteen feet and a capacity of five tons. The Hulett unloader, a massive gantry or traveling crane, was produced in 1899. It is equipped with "gigantic steel arms that thrust themselves into a ves- 478 - THIS CLEVELAND OF OURS sel's depth and grasp a fifteen-ton handful of ore apiece." Each arm has not only a hand but a wrist. An operator standing on the wrist rides up or down with the arm, guiding it in any direction. With it, six men accomplish the work that formerly required ninety shovelers. The entire machine is said to weigh more than an army of five thousand men, yet it obeys the slightest touch of its operator. The spectacular gantry, moving on rails parallel to the wharf supports a carriage that looks like a moving bridge, at right angles to the face of the dock. From this carriage extends a tilting girder, at the water end of which hangs the arm carrying the rotatable bucket or "fist," reaching the ore not only beneath the hatchways, but between them. It has either hydraulic or electric power. It is a delicate business thrusting such giant arms into the hull of a ship, even when it is a stout fabric of steel plates with rigid bridgework and bulkheads. Yet the problem has been mastered. And thus the same dredge principle which mines the ore cheaply at the head of the Lakes sets it down cheaply on the docks of the lower lakes. It is such time-andlabor-saving devices which, combined with the highly efficient lake freighters and the unequaled waterway, make it possible to convey a ton of ore from the western end of Lake Superior to the southern shore of Lake Erie, one thousand miles distant, and unload it, for 96 cents a ton, and to carry coal on the return trip for "less than the cost of shoveling it from your sidewalk into your cellar." Cleveland, which has produced most of this equipment, makes full use of it. Standing out against the sky at the Erie docks, west of the river mouth, are four five-ton Brown electric unloaders and two huge Hulett unloaders working in one battery of six machines, with a capacity of 40,000 tons a day. In the storage yard of the same docks are a ten-ton electric ore bridge and a Wellman-Seaver-Morgan car-dumper. The Central Furnace dock of the American Steel and Wire Company has four Hoover & Mason bridges and two Hulett unloading bridges, also a Hulett storage bridge. The Cleveland and Pittsburgh dock has four electric Huletts STEEL - 479 with unloading capacity of 40,000 tons a day, and a storage bridge. The Otis Steel Company's dock has two steam McMyler and two steam Brown unloaders, and a storage bridge. The River Dock Company has three electric Hulett unloaders. The Bourne-Fuller dock has a Wellman-Seaver-Morgan electric bridge. CHAPTER III SHIPPING Lake Superior, a sea in itself, was the last of important American waters to be navigated by white men. Its waters, like its rich shores, were little more than a legend. For a few years after the War of 1812 its broad bosom bore one vessel, a little schooner flying the British flag. Even Lake Michigan carried the American flag for the first time in 1834 when John Jacob Astor built a vessel there for his fur trade, with timber brought from the Black River where Lorain now stands. In 1845 a little sloop and schooner, the Ocean and the Merchant, together making 40 tons, were taken past the Sault Ste. Marie rapids on rollers for the Superior fur trade. A little later that same summer the Indians were frightened by the scream of a whistle as the steamer Independence from Chicago, a behemoth of 280 tons, puffed proudly up the lake. Next the Baltimore was dragged through during the winter and equipped with engines. Steam was coming to the home of Steel. With the discovery of iron ore, as has been told, shipping rose to the need. The Soo Canal was built to carry the freighters, and then enlarged or duplicated again and again. Here is a little story, a genuine saga in matter and form, recalling the perils of navigation on the upper lakes in that day. When the Soo Canal was opened in 1855, the first boat through the lock was the brig Freeman of Cleveland, whose captain was J. H. Andrews. Returning to his home port, Captain Andrews was asked to take the schooner Seeman up to Ontonagon, on Lake Superior, with a cargo of powder and barrels. It was now late in the season, and bad weather was to be expected. The schooner was in poor condition. Her owner, H. N. Gates, and also the owner of the cargo, said - 480 - STEEL - 481 they would accept the risk. Captain Andrews made the vessel as seaworthy as he could, and sailed away. The rest of the story is recorded in his own words : "With the thermometer showing 12 degrees below zero and the ship loaded with ice, we reached Ontonagon December 7. In the village supplies were very low. Flour was selling for $15 a barrel and very little was to be had. The townspeople tried to coax me into sailing to Copper Harbor, but I told them I would not think of going into the lake again, in a sailing vessel, at that time of the year. They offered to buy the ship. I made a price. They accepted and put Captain Beaser on board. Within twelve hours after I sold the boat, she was on the rocks near Copper Harbor. I remained in Ontonagon until January 14, when with the crew I started back on snowshoes for Cleveland. "For thirty days we floundered through the snow, and on the thirtieth day, when all my party had set down to die, as we had nothing to eat except a raw hedgehog through the last three clays, I kept going out of sheer desperation. Suddenly I came to a water hole in the ice on a creek, and following the path found a shanty occupied by some loggers. By kicking and cursing I managed to get the men to move. After recuperating we secured a conveyance to take us to Madison, Wisconsin. I had more than $12,000 in my pockets, but it might have been so much chaff so far as buying anything was concerned. The loggers would not listen to pay. "On the way back to Cleveland the train stopped at Oberlin, Ohio, and chancing to look out of the window I saw Mr. Gates. I yelled at him, and with a quaver in his voice he answered : " 'Is it you, captain?' " 'Certainly !' " 'I thought you were dead.' He came into the car and took hold of my arm. 'Now I see you are not dead ! Where is my schooner Seeman?' " 'I do not know precisely, but the last time I saw her was on the eleventh day of December, going winged out for Copper Harbor.' 482 - THIS CLEVELAND OF OURS " 'Is it not a very singular thing,' he growled, 'to take charge of a man's vessel and not know where she is?' "I then told him what I had got for the vessel, as well as the freight, and that the crew was all alive. " 'If that is so, I am satisfied,' he said doubtfully. "I gave him the money." Along with this story, perhaps, should stand the tale of how Peter White brought the mail to Marquette about the same time, when everything was frozen up in midwinter and the population was entirely cut off from the outer world. White started in January with six Indians and three dog teams down across the peninsula to Green Bay to demand postal service. Meeting a mail train of dog sleds sent out unexpectedly, with no assurance that it would be repeated that winter, Peter sent five of his Indians with the dogs back to Marquette, footed it with the remaining Indian on snowshoes to Green Bay and dispatched a long and heated telegram to Sen. Lewis Cass at Washington. The Post Office Department promised to send an inspector immediately to see if the need was so great as he represented it. Meanwhile Peter, with the connivance of the local postmaster, gathered up all the empty mail bags in the place and stuffed them with old newspapers and scrap paper, with a thin layer of accumulated Marquette and Ontonagon mail at the top, until he had filled a room to the ceiling, with additional bags spilling out through the doorway. When the inspector arrived and saw those bags, his eyes bulged. White topped off his performance by entertaining the inspector royally for a week at the best hotel in town, emptied his pockets to pay his telegraph bill and returned to Marquette. From that time on, the snowbound village had mail three times a week. And just to show that life was still hard, even with regular mail, this sad little story of Marquette in the fall of 1858, only seven years after the brave resolution adopted when the first steamer appeared : Capt. Ben Sweet of the North Star, having delivered a cargo of supplies at Marquette, observing the depression which seemed to prevail, and desiring a pay cargo for his STEEL - 483 final down trip, posted a sign in the general store saying, "All Who Wish to Go Back East Get in Touch With Me." Word flew around and inquirers appeared in droves. He offered to take promissory notes for their passage. More than seven hundred accepted, and the poor little town was almost depopulated. First furs, then copper, brought the ships. It was iron that multiplied them. As ores went down the Lakes, flour and grain and sugar and salt and coal and tobacco and miscellaneous merchandise came up. For many years the fleets consisted almost wholly of sailing vessels. This was true even of the iron ore fleets. On the "windjammers" the ore was usually carried on deck, because it was too hard to get into and out of the hold. The steamers, which were mostly passenger vessels and had no satisfactory place to put the ore, did not want it at all. In fact, nobody really wanted such heavy, dirty, concentrated cargoes. The sailing masters objected particularly because, while the ore was easy to handle on their decks, it was dangerous, making their craft top-heavy and being apt to shift. If stored in the hold, there was too much shoveling. The use of the tub hoist, operated by a horse from the dock in unloading, partly reconciled the sailing men and prolonged the use of sails. In 1870 Frank E. Kirby, a builder of steamship engines, decided that lake ships must be made of iron. A wooden ship could be built almost anywhere; an iron ship required a special yard with varied tools and equipment. Kirby had to build his shipyards first. He organized the Detroit Drydock Company at Wyandotte, on the Detroit River, and imported workmen from the Clyde shipyards in Scotland. His first ship was the E. B. Ward, Jr., named for the well known Detroit captain for whom it was made. It was successful. Other orders came in, and other shipyards of the same type appeared. But the day of wooden ships was not yet ended. There was still plenty of ship timber; wood was cheaper than iron; and if the size of wooden ore carriers was limited, so was the demand for ore. Two years later appeared the first wooden steamers de- 484 - THIS CLEVELAND OF OURS signed especially for the ore traffic. They were the R. J. Hackett and the Forest City, of 1,200 tons, built by Peck and Masters in Cleveland. They were distinctly a new type, with hatches at twenty-four-foot intervals and the engine placed aft, to make freer space in the hold and more room for cargo. This model, turned into steel, has prevailed. The first iron steamer designed expressly for the ore trade is said to have been the Onoko, turned out in 1882 by the Globe Iron Works of Cleveland. At last it was recognized as fitting that iron should be carried by iron. This vessel, 287 feet long with 28 feet beam, was thought to be as large as would ever be built. There followed a period of great activity in shipbuilding. The lakes spawned ships. More and bigger ships demanded deeper channels and bigger locks. The first Soo Canal lasted until 1887, but years before that was inadequate. By 1870, only fifteen years after its construction, though it was expected to suffice forever, a sixteen-foot depth was demanded through St. Mary's .River, with a lock 80 feet wide and 515 feet long. Such dimensions, unprecedented, were generally disapproved. But construction began. The Weitzel lock was completed in 1881 at a cost of $2,000,000, and the canal was ceded to the United States. There were now two available locks, of which the elder was of little use. The river was deepened, as was the channel through the St. Clair flats. By 1884 the desired sixteen-foot channel ran the length of the Lakes, and the principal harbors were deepened accordingly. But ships were steadily growing in number, size and draught. In 1887 the government began the great Poe locks, named for Gen. 0. M. Poe, the army engineer. These locks were made 800 feet long and 100 feet wide, at the insistence of William Livingstone, who later had the Livingstone Channel in the lower Detroit River named for him. He also has the distinction of having provided the money that gave Henry Ford and James Couzens their big start in the automobile business, which in turn became so great a consumer of iron with the opening of the twentieth century. The Poe locks were built on the original site chosen by scales STEEL - 487 salesman Harvey for his pioneer lock, which at the time was still sound. It took nine years to build those huge Poe locks. Before they were finished, the sixteen-foot channel was too shallow. A new, shorter channel was opened through the Soo, saving eleven miles, and the government continued deepening channels throughout the chain of lakes, until they attained a depth of twenty-five feet, with a growing demand for still more depth. The Poe locks, made with a depth of twenty to twenty-two feet over the mitre sills, had been underestimated like their predecessors. While those locks were building, Canada started one herself, 900 feet long, 60 feet wide and 22 feet deep, finished in 1895. Ten years later appeared a bulk freighter too big for it, the William G. Mather, of the Cleveland-Cliffs Iron Company's fleet, with a 60-foot beam. That old Soo portage has finally been cut through by four deep-draught channels, three constructed by the United States and one by Canada, and all free to every kind of peaceful traffic without regard to flag or registry. The fine spirit of internationalism shown similarly throughout the whole Great Lakes and St. Lawrence waterway system has had much to do with the unparalleled development of the shipping industry and the industries which it serves in both of these countries. Lake vessels grew to 400 feet in 1895. In 1897 the Bessemer Steamship Company built for John D. Rockefeller a dozen vessels running up to 475 feet. A 500-foot length was reached in 1900. Sailing vessels were long towed by steamers or tugs, using their canvas for auxiliary power. Sails were nearly obsolete by the end of the century, though still seen occasionally for another decade. Wind power, yielding reluctantly to steam after 5,000 years of continuous use, was left for pleasure yachts, with no assurance of long duration even in that field to which it is so admirably adapted. Beauty had to yield to usefulness, white canvas to belching smoke, clean and swift lines to bulging capacity. A new and wonderfully efficient 488 - THIS CLEVELAND OF OURS type of hull has been evolved, lacking all grace, yet with a certain grandeur resulting from its size, power, simplicity and fitness. This is largely on the pattern established by the Augustus B. Wolvin in 1904, with girder arches instead of stanchions, leaving the hold without obstructions to interfere with unloading. The hold is in the form of a hopper sloping down from the main deck. These long, narrow, blunt-bowed craft, built of riveted steel plates and bridge-work, soon perhaps to be welded electrically, bulking like fallen skyscrapers when empty and riding low when laden, are admirably suited to the Great Lakes, perfectly adapted to carrying ore and coal, and hold more cargo per cubic foot than any other type ever devised. A principle of construction that might not be expected of steel vessels was originated by Harvey H. Brown, a brother of Alexander of "Brown Hoist" fame. An agent for iron companies, he felt the urge to build ships. He proceeded to make them with iron sides and wooden bottoms, because timbers would stand the shock of a rocky bottom better than iron. With improved and deepened channels, however, this device has been generally abandoned. A picturesque and novel type of craft seen on the Lakes during a period of 20 or 30 years beginning in 1888 was the "whaleback," designed by Alexander McDougall of the American Steel Barge Company. Built for the Rockefeller interests, these were used mainly for oil and ore. They were aptly described by the popular term applied to them. Plowing through the waves with their rounded decks awash, and only the pilot's house and crew's quarters visible above the water, they looked like nothing so much as cruising whales, though nowadays they would be mistaken for submarines. They had great cargo capacity and were good rough-weather craft, but failed to displace the more normal ship type because they were not so well adapted to loading and unloading. Only a few dozen of them were built. Thanks to all these carriers, and others, the traffic of the Soo was already surpassing that of Suez. In 1900 it locked through 14,436 steamers and 4,004 other registered craft STEEL - 489 bearing 25,643,000 tons of cargo. This freight consisted of 16,443,000 tons of iron ore, 4,486,000 tons of coal, 40,498,000 bushels of wheat, 6,760,000 barrels of flour, 131,000 tons of copper, 909,651,000 feet of lumber and 541,397 tons of general merchandise. Wheat and lumber were becoming almost as important to the merchant marine of the Great Lakes as were the basic mineral products. The once scorned "Superior Country" was not only supplying the raw materials for the Age of Steel and the rising Age of Electricity, but was feeding the industrial millions and building their homes. The Northwest's forests and soil, like its minerals, seemed inexhaustible. Through its shipping, Cleveland had been interested in wheat ever since the first cargo of grain, 233 bushels, came through the Soo in 1861. Farmers had gone into the Superior region only a little later than the prospectors. They were a different breed. Their "land-looking" was not for mineral or timber wealth, but for rich soil, and wherever they found it they settled. The first big invasion of settlers came after the Civil war, beginning about 1870. They pushed through northern Michigan and Wisconsin into Minnesota, thence into Dakota and Canada. Little by little it became known that along with its unrivaled iron and copper resources, that northwestern wilderness possessed the greatest wheat lands on the continent, possibly in all the world; and what was no less important, that in spite of the long, bitter winters and short summers, the potent sunlight of thosd long northern days amply compensated for the brief growing season. In 1870 there were 50,000 bushels shipped, the surplus from the settlers' own needs; the next year, 1,376,000; from then on, a golden stream from the remote plains beyond the divide. New cargoes demanded more ships. Grain elevators had to be built to match the ore docks. Ore vessels learned to gain additional revenue by serving themselves, as storage elevators for grain while lying idle over winter in the lower lakes. George Ashley Tomlinson, a shipping agent at Duluth, helped this farm industry, while he did lake shipping a good turn, by introducing Minnesota wheat to the world market in Liverpool. Freight rates, as usual, were cheap 490 - THIS CLEVELAND OF OURS for the water haul. The wheat could be set down in New York, via the Lakes and the Erie Canal, for three cents a bushel. Soon Minnesota was feeding English mill and factory workers with whom American workers, similarly fed, were competing for the world steel market. More statistics : In 1903 there passed through the Soo 21,654,000 tons of iron ore, 6,937,000 tons of coal, 61,384,000 bushels of wheat and 34,674,000 tons of general freight, with a net registered vessel tonnage of 27,736,000. Note especially the gain in wheat. The American grain has flowed naturally from the fields of the Northwest to Duluth, Milwaukee and Chicago, especially the first, which is therefore the principal point for water shipment. The Canadian grain streams have poured into Fort William and Port Arthur, on Superior's northern shore. The first grain elevator, built in 1884, held 250,000 bushels. By 1930 the twin cities of Duluth and Superior, astride St. Louis Bay, had storage for 50,000,000 bushels, Milwaukee for 10,000,000 and Chicago 60,000,000, while the huge elevators visible from afar on the waterfront of Buffalo, the principal receiving port, accommodated 40,000,000 bushels. Mechanical handling of the grain had become so efficient that half a million bushels could be loaded in less than seven hours. Still more statistics : In 1917 passages of the Soo totaled 22,885, net registered tonnage 65,307,000, iron ore 61,374,000 tons, coal 18,298,000 tons, wheat 185,899,000 bushels, other grain 67,415,000 bushels, lumber 350,609,000 feet, total freight 89,813,000 tons. That was the big war year, followed by a slump and another rise mounting still higher. In the remarkable industrial year of 1929, the crest of the post-Armageddon prosperity wave, as against the 106,295 registered tonnage accommodated by the channel in St. Mary's River the year it was opened, there was floated through it a tonnage of 68,240,000. And against the 14,503 tons of freight carried in 1855, there was a total of 92,622,000 tons, unequaled in the world's history. Compare withthat record the freight carried in the same boom year by the STEEL - 491 Panama Canal, 34,342,000 tons, and by the Suez Canal, 38,658,000 tons, both of them new records, yet together falling nearly 20,000,000 tons short of the Soo's achievement. Mention should be made of distinguished ships in this traffic. In 1906 the Elbert H. Gary carried 313,434 tons of ore down the Lakes in one season. In 1916 the Col. James M. Schoonmaker carried 464,725 tons. In 1922 the Henry G. Dalton moved 405,220 tons. This vessel won the record for hard coal barges in 1920, when she took on 14,614 tons at the Lackawanna dock in Buffalo, loading it in eleven hours and fifteen minutes, at the rate of 1,299 tons an hour. The record for discharging ore and loading coal is attributed to the Harry Coulby, which in 1928 unloaded 13,994 tons of ore in four hours and forty-five minutes and took on 14,985 tons of soft coal in five hours and forty-five minutes, total time ten hours and thirty minutes for a total of 30,658 net tons. In 1924 the William K. Field delivered 552,014 tons of ore and coal in a navigation season of seven months and seventeen days, consisting of 22 cargoes of ore from Allouez, Wisconsin, to Ashtabula and 24 cargoes of coal from Ashtabula to Duluth. In 1928 the self-unloader Huron from April 1 to December 1, made an all-time record of 57 cargoes of stone, total 480,814 tons; 73 cargoes of soft coal, 442,019 tons; grand total 130 cargoes, 922,833 tons net freight. The James McNaughton is said to have beaten the William K. Field in 1925 and 1927, but no details are given. The record for fast stevedore work is held by the steamer William G. McGonagle, which discharged 11,445 gross tons of iron ore at the Pittsburgh and Conneaut Dock, in Conneaut, in two hours and twenty minutes, at the rate of 4,905 tons an hour. That would interest the men who used to shovel ore up from the hold, stage by stage to the deck, and the men who wheeled it ashore in barrows. After ore, coal is obviously the most important form of lake freight. But because it is to Cleveland so much more than mere freight for steamers, it will be dealt with in a chapter by itself, a little further on. It remains here to deal 492 - THIS CLEVELAND OF OURS briefly with other significant items of lake freight and shipping. Of wheat, already referred to in this chapter, more than 72 per cent of the country's output is produced in states tributary to the Great Lakes, and the lake freightage in recent years has exceeded 500,000,000 bushels. About two-thirds of all the wheat that comes down the Lakes goes to Buffalo, because of its convenience as a distributing point for the populous East and the export trade, and its enterprise in recognizing this opportunity. Lumber, for many years one of the leading down-cargoes on the Lakes, and the source of some notable Cleveland fortunes, has fallen off greatly. It neared its peak about 1900, in which year 909,651,000 feet came through the Soo, without counting production lower down the Lakes. A little later there were billion-foot years, which dwindled to recent averages of less than 200,000,000 feet. It is difficult to compare figures in some of the recent tables with the older ones, because computations are now usually in tons rather than board feet. A table using this system shows that lumber movements through the Soo rose from 244,000 short tons in 1884 to 2,076,000 tons in 1899, falling to 1,206,000 tons in 1910, 385,000 in 1920 and 374,000 in 1928. In the last-named year the total of forest products carried on the Lakes was 2,152,000 short tons, of which Cleveland received only 9,705 tons. The traffic consists now mainly of logs, poles, staves, shingles and similar small material, with considerable pulp and pulpwood. Our lumber for building now comes largely from the Pacific Northwest, through the Panama Canal and from the eastern seaboard by rail. Lower Michigan and southern Ontario, and even Upper Michigan and Minnesota, are pretty well lumbered out. Lumber towns have sadly declined. As lumber dwindles in importance, stone increases. Limestone, the third member of the big steel trio, has always played a big role in Cleveland because of its importance in smelting iron and its other industrial and building uses, and because of the immense deposits in the adjacent Lake Erie STEEL - 495 islands and on the mainland south of them. Kelleys Island is still, as it has been for a century, an apparently exhaustless quarry. There are limitless deposits in the lower Michigan peninsula, heavily drawn upon for the Lake Erie trade. In 1928 Sandusky shipped 308,000 tons and Kelleys Island 280,000 tons, all to Lake Erie ports. Cleveland received from all lake sources 1,025,000 tons and Fairport 1,082,000 tons. Large quantities of limestone are used now for concrete, rubble, riprap for breakwaters, roads, buildings, etc. Some sandstone is carried, too, although our sandstone sources are mostly inland. In loading at large ports the stone is handled like coal and ore, carried along conveyers to the stock pile, then through hoppers to movable conveyers which deposit it in the ship. The unloading problem is greatly facilitated by the modern type of self-unloading vessel. Elevators bring the stone up out of the hold and load it onto belt conveyers, which carry it to the storage yard. The average capacity of a vessel of this type is about 15,000 tons, and it can unload at the rate of a ton a second. There are also dock machines used for unloading, with the modern clam-shell buckets attached to movable bridges, controlled from any point on the dock. Buffalo is the chief receiving port for stone, with Fairport next. The Cleveland-owned Bradley fleet, the largest in this industry, handles as much as 700,000 tons a year. The flagship of this fleet, the Carl D. Bradley, is 639 feet long, with 65 feet beam, and one of the largest Great Lakes ships. In the season of 1927 it carried the first 16,000 net ton cargo on the Lakes. In 1928 it established a record for unloading limestone with its own equipment, 15,633 gross tons in five hours and twenty-one minutes, or 2,922 tons an hour. It is the boast of such ships that they need no docks ; they can set a cargo ashore almost anywhere by means of a boom swung from the bow, lifting to a height of 65 feet above the ground and discharging cargo 115 feet from the side of the vessel. It is a curious fact that very little petroleum is shipped on the Lakes, especially from Cleveland and other Lake Erie 496 - THIS CLEVELAND OF OURS ports from which such shipment might be expected. Such traffic as there is consists mainly of crude oil received by pipe line and refined for shipment at Indiana Harbor, on Lake Michigan. There are considerable sand and gravel shipments on Lake Erie, coming mainly from the Canadian side of the lake. There is still more to be said, in presenting an adequate picture of the immense volume of this Great Lakes traffic. There are always millions of tons of lake vessels that do not pass through the Soo. Chief among these are the passenger and the package freight ships, which are usually identical, plying between ports below Lake Superior. Many of them still conform to the familiar side-wheel type which appeared on Lake Erie toward the middle of the last century, and which are characteristic of the Lakes as the stern-crew liners are of the deep sea and the stern-wheelers of the Mississippi. Many, especially those designed for the longer routes and the deeper lakes, follow the ocean liners or bulk freighters of the Lakes in lengthier design and the use of propellers. As a class, they are the largest and finest fresh-water craft in the world, accommodating passengers in cabins running the full length of the upper decks, and freight in the holds below, in varying proportions. They run in size up to about 400 feet and 4,000 tons, and carry about 30,000,000 passengers and 4,000,000 tons of general freight a year. The package freight, as compared with the bulk freight (ore, coal, lumber, grain, etc.) is said to represent one-third of the lake commerce in value, though much less significant in volume. The principal shipping ports for package freight are, in order, Alpena, Duluth-Superior, Buffalo, Milwaukee, Detroit, Cleveland and Chicago. This freight is mostly domestic, and includes cement, lime, automobiles, sugar, flour, salt, manufactured iron and steel, pig iron and miscellaneous articles of commerce. First in this trade come the group of ports on Lake Erie, Lake St. Clair and their connecting rivers. In volume Buffalo is first, Detroit second and Cleveland third. Buffalo handles more package freight than any other port STEEL - 497 of the Great Lakes, because of its location as a trans-shipment point for eastern railroads, the New York Barge Canal and the adjoining Welland Canal. Cleveland, with its municipal pier leased to two important water-carriers, has better waterfront facilities than its competitors for the package trade. Its receipts consist mainly of automobiles and trucks. Its outbound package freight is 41 per cent iron and steel manufactures, with almost as much small, miscellaneous merchandise. In the combined passenger-and-freight traffic there were on the Lakes in October, 1929, 63 steamers of more than 1,000 tons registry, aggregating 184,048 tons. They ran up to 8,000 gross tons and 519 feet in length. The most pretentious passenger vessels on the Lakes are the Greater Detroit and Greater Buffalo of the Detroit and Cleveland Navigation Company, launched at Lorain in 1923 for the Buffalo-Detroit service. They are side-wheelers, and have an extra rudder molded into the bow to help maneuvering in narrow channels. Both are 500 feet long, 100 feet wide and 23 feet six inches draught, having 650 rooms with bed or berths. They accommodate 1,200 passengers and compare favorably with the largest ocean liners. In recent years motor ships have appeared on the Lakes, supplanting steam by the installation of Diesel motors burning oil. The two largest are the Henry Ford II and Benson Ford, built in 1924, and operated by the Ford Motor Company. They are a little over 600 feet long, with a gross carrying capacity of 13,000 tons. Two electrically driven Diesel vessels, the Twin Ports and Twin Cities, 251 feet over all with 42 feet beam and 16 feet draught, built to ply between Duluth and New York through the Barge Canal, have been transferred to the St. Lawrence, operating in the West Indies during the winter. They carry grain, package freight and refrigerated goods. There were 15 motor vessels in 1928 engaged in lake and coastwise traffic. There are several dozen barges carrying ore, lumber, grain, pulp, gravel, sand, etc. The package freight has not grown with the bulk freight. 498 - THIS CLEVELAND OF OURS It had a good start, but has now declined to three per cent of the lake traffic. This is said to be the result of a lack of harmony between the lake carriers and the railroads. The joint rates in force do not represent the natural economy of water routes. There is not enough interchange of freight between rails and ships, especially on the upper lakes. More favorable conditions are sought in this respect, to enable ports like Cleveland to profit more adequately from their natural advantages. One of the growing branches of lake traffic is car ferry service for railroads. This was started as long ago as 1892 by the Ann Arbor Railroad, with its wooden ferry across Lake Michigan between Frankfort, Michigan and Kewaunee, Wisconsin. There are now 35 ferries in active service on the Lakes, of which 19 are on Lake Michigan, six on the Detroit River, four on Lake Erie, two on Lake Ontario, two on the Straits of Mackinac and one on the St. Lawrence. All are built of steel. The Lake Carriers' report for 1928 gave the lake fleet total as 839 vessels aggregating 3,194,368 tons, of which 516 vessels of 2,365,699 tons were engaged in transporting ore, coal and grain ; 19 vessels of 43,634 tons, coal, grain, salt and pulp ; 23 vessels of 40,615 tons, coal and grain ; 25 of 116,682 tons, self-unloading, coal, cement and stone; and five self-unloaders of 11,148 tons, coal only. According to estimates of War Department and Shipping Board experts in "Transportation on the Great Lakes," the commerce on the Lakes increased from 130,148,000 short tons in 1925 to 149,706,000 in 1928, with all known duplications omitted. This traffic was valued at $2,496,751,000. Lake Erie received and shipped a greater tonnage than any other lake, proving it to be industrially and commercially the most active member of the big chain, as it has always been. Lake Superior came second and Lake Michigan third. The five ports rated by volume of shipments are in the following order: Duluth-Superior, Buffalo, Toledo, Chicago and Cleveland. Duluth leads because of its ore shipments, largely controlled by Cleveland interests. Buffalo is prominent because of its STEEL - 499 wheat receipts and general trans-shipping activity, Toledo because of its coal shipments. In value of freight Lake Michigan is first, Erie second, Superior third, Ontario fourth, Huron fifth. Buffalo is the leading port in value. The water-borne traffic on the Great Lakes in 1928, not including traffic between foreign ports, made the tremendous total of 87,392,110,000 tot-miles. That would interest George Washington or Moses Cleaveland or Robert Fulton. Showing the usefulness of canals, the Soo in 1928 carried freight amounting to 86,992,000 tons, the Welland 7,439,000 tons, the St. Lawrence Canals 8,411,000 tons, the New York Barge Canal 3,090,000 tons. And showing the commercial activity in the main artery of the system, the Detroit River, which is a better criterion than St. Mary's River, in 1929 shuttled 110,720,000 tons, nearly a ton for every man, woman and child in the United States. Shipbuilding.—The story of early shipbuilding has been told. It remains to tell briefly of this industry during the period when, in connection with the traffic in ore and coal, it came to its full growth. In the roster of pioneer shipbuilders will be remembered the names of Seth W. Johnson, who began with a ship-repair yard in 1835, proceeded to build some of the earliest steamboats and established the firm of Johnson & Tisdale, which endured until 1863 ; of Quayle & Moses, who later became Quayle & Martin, and up to 1869 had turned out nearly 80 vessels; of Peck & Masters, who launched half a hundred ships between 1855 and 1864; of Peck's continuation of the business alone, building revenue cutters for government use on the Lakes, along with large commercial craft; of a name better known to the present generation, Capt. Alva Bradley, who brought his shipyard from Vermillion in 1868 and established a lasting tradition of master-building; of the construction in the Cuyahoga district between 1849 and 1869 of about 500 vessels of various types, nearly all of them in Cleveland shipyards. There were also Stevens & Presley, who in 1847 had fol-