The Great Lakes.The Vessels That Plough Them. Curwood James Oliver

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      At this end of the great ore industry the wonderful mechanism for the handling of cargoes is even more astonishing than that of the Northland. The ore carrier is run under a huge unloading machine which thrusts steel arms down into the score or more hatches of the vessel, and without the assistance of human hands the cargo is emptied so quickly that the uninitiated observer stands mute with astonishment. How quickly this work is done is shown in the record of the George W. Perkins, which discharged 10,346 tons at Conneaut in four hours and ten minutes.

      Once more, after this unloading, the steel monster of the Lakes is all but ready for her long journey into the North. Within a few hours she is reloaded, with a few sonorous blasts of her whistle she bids a last adieu, and again she is off on the long trail that leads to the “ugly wealth” in the ore ranges of Superior.

      III

      What the Ships Carry – Other Cargoes

      Not long ago I went to see William Livingstone, President of the Lake Carriers’ Association – Great Admiral, in a way, of the world’s mightiest fleet of steel – an enrolled navy of 593 ships and a tonnage of nearly one million nine hundred thousand. Unconsciously I had come to call this man the Grey Man and the Man who Knows. Both titles fit, as they will tell you from the twin Tonawandas to Duluth. For six consecutive years president of the greatest organisation of its kind on earth, an association of ships made up, if weighed, of half of the iron and steel floating on the Inland Seas, he has become a part of Lake history. I sought him for an idea. I found it.

      The Grey Man was at his desk studying over the expenditure of a matter of several millions of dollars for a new canal at the “Soo.” He turned slowly – grey suit, grey tie, grey eyes, grey beard, grey hair – all beautifully blended. He seldom speaks first. He is always fighting to be courteous, yet the days are ten hours too short for him.

      “I want a new idea,” I opened bluntly. “I want something new in marine – something that will make people sit up and take notice, as it were. Can you help me?”

      He swung slowly about in his chair until his eyes rested upon a picture on the wall. It was a picture of the old days on the Lakes. My eyes, too, rested on the old picture. It reminded me of things, and I kept pace with the thoughts that might be his. I saw him, more than half a century before, the stripling son of a ship’s carpenter, swimming in the shadows of the big fore-’n’-afters that were monarchs before steam came – glorious days when ninety-eight per cent. of vessels carried sail, and sailors dispensed law with their fists and bore dirks in their bootlegs. Later I saw the proud moment of his first trip to “sea” – and then, quickly, I noted his rise: his saving dollar by dollar until he bought an interest in a tug, his monopolisation of it later, his climb – up – up – until —

      “I’m busy, very busy!” he broke in quietly. “But say, did you ever think of this? Did you ever build a city of the lumber we carry each year, populate that city, feed it with the grain we carry, and warm it with our coal? You can do it on paper and you will be surprised at what you find. It will show you more graphically than anything else just what the ships carry. Try it. You’ll be interested.”

      I have kept that idea warm. Now I am going to use it. For probably in no better way can the immensity of the lumber, grain, coal, flour, and package freight traffic of the Great Lakes be given. Imagine, then, this “City of the Five Great Lakes.” We will build it, we will people it, feed it, and heat it – and our only material, with the exception of its inhabitants, will be the cargoes of the Lake carriers for a single season. And these carriers? If you should stand at the Lime Kiln Crossing, in the Detroit River, one would pass you on an average every twelve minutes, day and night, during the eight months of navigation; and when you saw their number and size you would wonder where they could possibly get all of their cargoes. The cargoes with which we will deal in this article will be of lumber, grain, flour and coal, for these, with iron ore, constitute over ninety per cent. of the commerce of the Inland Seas.

      To build our city we first require lumber. During the 1909 season of navigation about 1,500,000,000 feet of this material will be carried by Lake ships. What this means it is hard to conceive until it is turned into houses. To build a comfortable eight-room dwelling, modern in every respect, requires about 20,000 feet of lumber, and when we divide a billion and a half by this figure we have 75,000 homes, capable of accommodating a population of about 400,000 people. With the thousands of tons of building stone transported by lake each year, the millions of barrels of cement, the cargoes of shingles, sand, and brick, our “City of the Lakes” for 1909 would be as large as Buffalo, Cleveland, or Detroit.

      But one does not begin fully to comprehend the significance of the enormous commerce of the Great Lakes, and what it means not only to this country but to half of the civilised world, until he begins to figure how long the grain which will be carried by ships during the present year would support this imaginary city of 400,000 adult people. There will pass through the “Soo” canals this year at least 90,000,000 bushels of wheat and 60,000,000 bushels of other grain, besides 7,500,000 barrels of flour, all of which represents the “bread stuff” that is shipped from Lake Superior ports alone. There will, in addition, be shipped by lake at least 50,000,000 bushels from Chicago, Milwaukee, and other ports whose eastbound commerce is not reported at the “Soo.” In short, estimating conservatively from the past four years, it is safe to say that at least 200,000,000 bushels of grain and 11,000,000 barrels of flour will have been transported by the Great Lakes marine by the end of this year’s season of navigation.

      But what do these figures mean? They seem top-heavy, unwieldly, valuable perhaps to the scientific economist, but of small interest to the ordinary everyday eater of bread. Let us reduce this grain to flour. It takes from four and a half to five bushels of grain for a barrel of flour and dividing by the larger figure our grain would give us 40,000,000 barrels, which, plus the 11,000,000, would make a total of 51,000,000 barrels. Now we come right down to dinner-table facts. At least 250 one-pound loaves of bread can be made from each 196-pound barrel of flour, or a total of 12,750,000,000 from the whole, which would mean at least five loaves for every man, woman, and child of the two and one half billion people who inhabit this globe! In other words, figuring from the reports of food specialists, the grain and flour carried by the ships of the Lakes for one year would give the total population of the earth a food supply sufficient to keep it in life and health for a period of two weeks!

      This enormous supply of the staff of life would give each of the 400,000 bread-eating people in our “City of the Lakes” a half-pound a day for one hundred and seventy-five years, or it would supply a city of the size of Chicago with bread for fifty years! To each of the 60,000,000 bread-eaters in the United States it would give 212 one-pound loaves, or, with an allowance of half a pound for each person per day, it would feed the nation for one year and two months!

      Now, having built our city, peopled it, and supplied it with food, we come to the point of heating it. In 1907, there were transported by Lake nearly 15,000,000 tons of coal, and this year another million will probably be added to that figure. Here again mere figures fail to tell the story. But when we come to divide this coal among the homes of a city like Cleveland, Detroit, or Buffalo, which rank with our 75,000-home “City of the Lakes,” we again come to an easy understanding. Each of these 75,000 home-owners would receive as his share over 213 tons of coal, and if he burned six tons each winter this would last him for thirty-five years!

      In a nutshell, there is enough lumber and other material carried by Lake ships each year to build a city the size of Detroit; there is enough grain transported to supply its 400,000 inhabitants with bread-stuffs for a period of one hundred and seventy-five years, conceding the total population of the city to be adults; and enough coal is shipped from Erie ports into the North to heat the homes in this city for thirty-five years!

      When one knows these facts, when perhaps for the first time in his life СКАЧАТЬ