1921 Duluth & St Louis County MN, Van Brunt.pdf - Garon.us

548 DULUTH AND ST. LOUIS COUNTY
Webb Mine.—The Webb mine was explored by P. H. Nelson in
1901. An underground mine was developed by the Shenango Ore
Company, but shipments did not begin until 1905. D. C. Peacock
was superintendent. Up' to the end of 1919, the total quantity
shipped was 1,524,746 tons. The mine still belongs to the same
people, the Shenango Furnace Co., E. J. Maney being manager, and
H. S. Rankin superintendent. It is a valuable property, having almost
ten million tons of ore still available.
Great Northern Iron Ore Properties.—When the United States
Steel Corporation was organized in 1901, "panic seized owners of
mining property." They felt that they had lost their ore market.
It is said that "one could have bought the whole of the Mesabi range
(that lay outside the Oliver Iron Mining enclosure) for little more
than the Dutch gave for Manhattan Island." But there were some
independent operators and financiers who were more courageous. A
few, who saw further, gathered up handfuls of these begging properties,
and it "was not long before there began the first era of lasting
prosperity the range had known." Independent steel manufacturers
were in the market for ore, and the demand expanded amazingly.
The history of the Mesabi range indicates that "it has afflicted
with additional wealth men already laboring under great fortunes."
Lumbermen who bought these lands for a trifling price, for the
timber only, found themselves "besieged by promoters who pleaded
for leave to pay them a million or so for their discard. Rockefeller
loaned a million and was recompensed by fifty. Carnegie, yielding to
Oliver's entreaties, to buy something that cost him not a penny, was
thereby master of the situation. James J. Hill bought a second-hand
logging road to oblige a friend, and was introduced to an estate on
which he once placed a value of eight-hundred million dollars."
Hill, it seems, was indifferent to ore until almost forced into it,
by the Wright-Davis logging railroad purchase, by which, figuring
haphazardly, he knew to be worth $60,000,000, in ore values. But
soon he took up the ore matter deliberately, and to the surprise of the
steel men gathered in all the "odds and ends" they had passed by,
and made the "odds and ends" into the "enormous assembly of ore"
the Great Northern properties represent. In a few years, his holdings
became almost as enormous as those of the Steel Corporation, which
could not permit him to have such a weapon of raw material to "hold
over their heads." To keep the supremacy for the Steel Corporation,
to maintain a safe base in raw materials, the United States Steel
Corporation were forced to come to James J. Hill eventually, and pay
him a larger royalty than had ever been paid on Mesabi ore. The
matter is dealt with in the general Mesabi Range chapter, of this
work.
Going back to the beginning, A. W. Wright and C. H. Davis,
of Saginaw, and John Killoren and M. H. Kelly, of Duluth, acquired
at the early land sales about six thousand acres of timber land, much
of it along the Mesabi range. They built a logging road from Swan
River into the heart of their land, which was near Hibbing, and
commenced logging. The Weyerhaeusers were their best customers,
and eventually the Wright and Davis syndicate oiTered them what
timber they had remaining, with the land as well, for a million and a
half. The Weyerhaeusers thought it better to take the timber for
$1,300,000, and leave the land in the possession of Wright and Davis.
Cut-over land was then worth from $2 to $5 an acre, where settlement
was possible. That on 6,000 acres did not represent much, and