Studies in History, Economics, and Public Law Volume . 23 (Paperback)

This historic book may have numerous typos and missing text. Purchasers can download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. Not indexed. Not illustrated. 1905 Excerpt: ...steel process, moreover, may have important results for the region. For thirty years Bessemer ores have commanded from $0.50 to $2 more than non-Bessemer. The suitability of ores for the Bessemer process of course depends primarily upon the proportion of phosphorus; ores which contain more than one part of phosphorus to a thousand of iron, or in the case of the ores we have used thus far, more than about.055 per cent to.06 per cent of phosphorus, are unavailable. The Lake Superior mines have perhaps the largest deposits of pure Bessemer ore in the world, and it is this fact that has given them their present primacy. Evidently the change to open-hearth steel-making and the basic Bessemer process, by making available more phosphoric ores, may bring Lake Superior much more sharply than ever before into competition with southern, eastern and imported ores. Such a competition, by making impossible a rise in the price of Superior ores as the mines are exhausted, would make only more imperative the application of capital to keep down cost, and so would but give more point to the theory presented in the first chapter. The whole question of the possible effects of the changes of process now taking place in steel manufacture is too large for consideration in a monograph of this character, and is therefore omitted. 9. To summarize briefly, the five great iron ranges lie almost parallel to the lake shore and distant from their shipping ports from 12 to 90 miles, the prevailing grades on the railroads being favorable to the loaded trains. The nearest of these shipping ports is about 550 miles by lake from Cleveland, the center of distribution to the furnaces, and the most distant of them about 300 miles farther away. The ores, deposited by underground water actio...