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

DULUTH AND ST. LOUIS COUNTY 559
lessly outclassed by the four-story fire-proof structure that was in
process of erection in the fall of 1920 at South, or new, Hibbing. The
Androy Hotel, a palatial hostelry of 162 rooms and 100 baths, promises
to excell all
Duluth.
hotels in the county, even including the Spaulding of
However, such a structure was not even the subject of the
craziest dream of even the most optimistic Hibbingite, of the '90s.
Hibbing for Long Literally a Mining Village.—As a matter of
fact, Hibbing for very many years was a mining village, a place wherein
mining was supreme, and where all other considerations were secondary.
Hemmed in as she was by mines on three sides of her, and
actually not owning the ground upon which she stood, her position,
as a municipality, and as a place of homes, was not an enviable one.
The attitude of the mining company was that the people were there
because of the mines ; which of course was true. They argued, or
thought, that the people without the mines, without the employment
the mines gave and the money the mines circulated, would starve
consequently, the comfort and interests of the people must be subordinate
or secondary to the interests of the mining companies. And
when it became necessary to blast, for instance, within dangerous
proximity to the home of the people, the people must make the best
they could of such conditions, which were unavoidable. One writer,
who may have been perhaps, somewhat too graphfc in his description,
pictured the condition in the following words
You sit with your little family around the table, partaking of the humble
repast your daily pittance allows you. Suddenly a mig^hty roar and blast
shakes everything in view, and a few seconds later there comes crashing
through your roof, or windows, the upheaved rpcks and debris, endangering
your lives and the lives of your loved ones. Picture the condition as a daily
occurrence. Likewise imagine yourself walking upon the public streets of
a town and then be suddenly forced to flee for safety into shelter, from similar
causes.
Put yourself in the place of a merchant, having, erected a suitable building
for your use, to wake some day to see the yawning abyss right at your
door, with the hungry maws of the steam shovel tearing away at your streets.
And this is just what happened here.
Such a condition has been duplicated, in respect to caving, in
quite recent years in the great city of Scranton, Pennsylvania, where
cavings have dropped buildings, or parts of buildings, without warning,
20, 30 or 40 feet into the bowels of the earth. But at any time
in early, or in modern, times such a state of things is deplorable. It
held Hibbing down for many years, just as similar conditions in
Scranton, Pennsylvania, resulted in an increase of only 3 per cent in
its population during the last decade. However, most wrongs are
righted eventually. Unreasonable conditions cannot prevail for long.
But the righting of Hibbing's wrong came by an unusual se(|uence
of events. The condition at Hibbing in its early years, and the ultimate
remedv were referred to in the* "St. Paul Despatch," of Mav
29, 1918, thus:
In the early days, open-pit mining encroached upon the town of Hibbing
from all sides, ami the clatter and rfiar of the steam shovels and the blast
of explosives filled the air day and night. The din resembled at all hours a
miniature battle of the Aisne.
With each and every blast, the rocks and shale had a most unpleasant
way of coming down through one's roof, or giving one a sudden attack of
heart failure, by falling in one's immediate neighborhood. Hibbing was being
literally blasted off the map. But nobody complained. It was expected as a
matter of course—an hourly occucrence. It was in n. and Hibbing was iron.
The iron and the blasting went hand in hand, and tiicre could be no complaint.
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