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MAR x APR, 1978 Page40 The SIR WILLIAM SIEMENS, making "good black smoke. '* McDONALD Coll./DOSSIN MUSEUM Carnegie almost as independent of ore market fluctuations as if Carne- gie owned the Mesabi himself. On be- half of Carnegie, Oliver Mining Co. would lease Rockefeller's major pro- perties on the Mesabi and Gogebic Ranges. Oliver promised to take out at lease 600,000 tons of ore each year at a royalty of 25¢ per ton. This was less than half the going market royalty on ore. Rockefeller would ship this ore and 600,000 tons more from Oliver's own mines over the railroad and down to Lake Erie by ore ship. The price of such ship- ment would depend on going market rates for such transportation each year. Rockefeller promised to stay out of making steel, an easy deci- sion. Carnegie and Oliver Mining Company agreed to buy or lease no more Mesabi mines and to stay out of shipping their own Mesabi ore. News of this agreement demoralized the owners of mines on the older ranges, and Carnegie and Oliver bought up bargain mine properties there. So Rockefeller's ore royalties were to be fixed. The source of any growing profits for Rockefeller had to come in ore transportation, in Shaps partacularly. His railroad would get 80¢ a ton to carry ore seventy miles. By contrast, as of 1897, his ore boats would get only 70¢ a ton to relay the ore 900 miles down to Conneaut. Moreover, of this 70¢ the shipowner commonly paid 20¢ for loading and unloading cos>ts. We have seen that Rockefeller had his own loading docks, however, and car- negie made unloading more efficient at Conneaut docks in 1899 by putting the first Hulett unloaders to work. This 70¢ rate was the annual con- tract rate by which a shipowner might agree to carry ore for all or most of the season of 1897. In boom years of the early 1880s the con- tract rate for shipping ore to Lake Erie from Marquette rose up to $2.75 per ton. As late as 1887 shippers paid $2.00 a ton from Duluth. But since the Panic of 1893 the contract rates had fallen so low that most smaller craft were laid up instead. A shipowner could also be paid by each cargo he carried, and he could shift his ship from ore to grain or coal cargoes or even wood, according to the best rates of the moment. These were known as "wild rates" and