Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 68.djvu/176

 172 interests to other institutions will not correct any error which may be supposed to have been made in allowing them to accumulate that wealth in the first place.

It is often proposed to correct and control the excessive accumulation of wealth and the power or wealth by competition, but it must be remembered that competition is a most potent source of waste. The different iron ores are used together to produce a maximum amount of iron from a minimum amount of iron ore, because they are all owned by the same parties, regardless of the fact that some of the ores can be produced much more cheaply than others. But if the ore belonged to different parties and there were free and unrestricted competition the most cheaply produced ore would crowd the others for a time entirely from the market, and would cause a decay of the town supported by their development. I do not think that any one would consider this desirable, and certainly from the point of view of the geologist there would be a waste of resources.

It is lucky for Michigan that the iron ore of Lake Superior is held by a comparatively few strong corporations, the U. S. Steel Corporation having, say, a billion tons on the Mesabi range and many million tons on the older range. The Mesabi ore is a mere mass of varicolored dirt. I saw five forties last summer said to contain 200,000,000 tons of ore. All that has to be done is to run in trains of ore cars and load it on by steam shovels, after once the layer of clay till, etc., overhead is removed. The huge, yawning, red chasms thus left when weathered in the smoke of puffing locomotives and laboring steam shovels, present a volcanic and truly infernal picture. In time some of them will be 400 feet and over deep. The ore, too, is largely of the highest grade. What could any ordinary iron mine do in competition with such, especially those of Michigan, where the miners have all now disappeared underground?

Fortunately, however, it has been found that in the draft of the blast furnace in which these ores are reduced to iron, a good part of this light powdery ore is liable to be blown out if not held down by something more substantial. Moreover, a certain amount of some flux must be added to aid the flow of the iron, and the silica of some of our Michigan harder ores, poorer in iron, is admirably adapted to that end. And as the same interests own properties in both states they prefer, rather than to let their Michigan properties go to rack and ruin, to use a moderate amount of that ore and save wasting their Mesabi ore, even if thereby it is not produced quite as cheaply at the moment. They fix the price, and in the long run it will be doubtless better for the community and corporation. More iron will be made with less work, by mining the high grade and low grade ores together, than there would were the high grade ore first run and wasted and then the low grade ore developed. The same thing is true regarding coal. In an era of unrestricted competition only the choicest portions of the best seams