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Show the use of a scraper, also .operated by similar machinery, ma-chinery, and managed by a man in the hold, through, the e of long cords. The scraper brings the ore from between the batches so that it can be raised by the grab. These grabs are controlled by the engineer, en-gineer, who can drop them at any point over the hold that he may wish, and after it seizes its load of ore it is raised at full speed, carried rapidly along the trolley to such given points as desirable, where the ore is deposited into railroad trucks or stock piles, or in some cases, into concrete, troughs, through which it sydes to the furnaces,, where it is to be transferred into pig iron. Twenty-six men will now perform, under this system, the work for which 300 were required under the old system. This is indeed in-deed a splendid testimonial to the ingenuity and enterprise en-terprise of American mining men. BIr. Ersklnes report re-port will prove a revelation to British operators. And it will advertise American machinery and American methods,' too. 1 ' ' ' Wondrous Lesson in Ore Handling. The United States leads the world in mining and everything that pertains to that industry. And it is a remarkable lesson in ore-handling which American, Amer-ican, operators are teaching their British cousins. The wonders accomplished in the mining and handling hand-ling of ore in this country by the application of raod- era machinery are outlined in a special rejort to the British Government, made by the acting British Consul at Chicago, Mr. T. Erskine. In mining ore in ' certain parts of the Lake Superior region, he says that the top covering of ground rock is scraped off over.the whole property before mining begins. Railroad Rail-road .tracks are then laid direct to the ore bed, and the ore is loosened by blasting. Steam shovels are then brought Into use and they load the ore directly upon the cars, one of these machines having loaded 170,000 tons in twenty-six days, or at the rate of oter 6500 tons per day. These loading machines, which daily handle more than 6000 tons, are each operated by five men, and the labor cost for mining and loading averages but about 16 cents per ton, and In the case of one mine, which dug and loaded 293,651 tons in 174 days, the labor cost was only 4 cents per too. In the transfer of ore from mine to . vessel on the lakes the absence of hand labor is also noticeable. The ore trains are run on to long docks extending high above the water, and having large pockets' or apartments, into which the ore is discharged dis-charged from the cars through an opening at the bottom of the car, from which the ore runs by gravity grav-ity into the pockets beneath the tracks. From these pockets the ore is loaded into the vessel, also by gravity, and passed down long chutes into the hold of the vessel, so that no hand labor is required in transferring the ore from the cars to the vessel. In unloading the ore from the vessels the saving of labor la-bor through the use of machinery is even more notable no-table and important in its economies and results. A series of steel bridges, so adjusted as to be easily moved along the docks, is supplied with a hinged arm, which can be lowered to the hatch of the vessel. ves-sel. Along this arm and across the bridge runs a trolley train, to which are attached automatic "grabs'' similar to a double scoop, which are so constructed con-structed that the grab or scoop digs downward into the ore as it closes. The grab or scoop holds about five tons and is described as a "digging machine," i as when it begins to draw together it digs into the , ore and does not depend on its weight to get hold of the ore. There are fifteen unloading machines in a battery, and the grabs run down the long arms which are lowered over each of the fourteen hatches that are in the deck of most lake vessels carrying ore. These hatches , run'"r nearly the whole way across the decks. The grabs can thus remove over half the cargo without any assistance, and the remaining re-maining half is brought directly under the hatch bj |