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VOL. XVI. Bells for Gas-Buoys Light-House Board Matters. Washington, D. C., Oct. 27.--The light-house board, which meets Nene on Monday next, will give up a great deal of time to a discussion of affairs of the lakes. The introduction of some forty-seven gas buoys on the lakes during the past season has opened up new problems to the board. Capt. Schley, who is chairman of the board, and Commander Wilde, the naval secretary, have been over the lakes recently, however, and they are fully acquainted with the situation. New tenders (vessels of the light-house service) must be provided for the lakes, as it is quite certain that the suc- cess of the gas buoys will cause the vessel owners to ask congress for more of them, to be provided next season. Even in providing for the care of the present number of buoys, the executive officers of the board are plan- ning to send to the lakes, early in the spring, an old tender, the Laurel, now at Key West, which will be temporarily fitted for gas-buoy service until at least one new vessel can be built. A new tender for coast service, now building at the Crescent Ship Yard, Elizabeth, N. J., will replace the Laurel some time in December at the Florida station. The Safety Car Heating & Lighting Co. of New York, which controls patents on the gas buoys in this country, is now experimenting with an improvement in them that will be of great advantage. Everybody has heard of the bell buoy that rings with the roll of the sea. On the lakes there are long periods of fog--heavy fog of the worst kind. This fog is seidom or ever in evidence when a seaway is on. It is accompanied by dead calm. Bell buoys are of no use when unaccompanied by motion of the sea. But it is proposed now to utilize the gas in the lake buoys, and in all gas buoys in fact, for the purpose of not only producing a constant light but also to operate a bell in the frame-work that contains the light. From tests already made with bells in the frame-work of the gas buoy, it has been found that there will be no difficulty in producing a strong sound every thirty seconds, and Mr. W. P. St. John, representing the New York company, says he is quite confident that by next spring, when the buoys are put out on the lakes, the bell-ringing apparatus will have been so. far perfected that a strong sound will be produced every fifteen seconds. 5 Another special matter that will come before the light-house board is a suggestion from Commander Folger of the important eleventh district. He directs attention to the advantage of placing the whole of the lake sys- tem (ninth, tenth and eleventh districts) under a central office at Detroit or Cleveland, in order to secure a uniformity in practice throughout, and also the contact, by a single responsible officer, with the Lake Carriers Association, or other bodies who are most deeply. interested in the lake traffic. It is quite probable that this would facilitate the work of the light- house service on the lakes. Commander Folger recommends no altera- tion in the districts themselves, but he urges that a uniform policy of man- agement over the whole extent of the lakes will materially benefit naviga- tion. Now each district follows its own course. Where the officer ip charge is a strict disciplinarian the light-house regulations are more rigidly enforced and the service is more satisfactory. He suggests no change in the present arrangement except the appointment of a supervising eH Ce of high rank, to secure uniformity of policy over the.whole expanse o ne lakes. He also recommends increase in the power of lights generally throughout the lakes. This is a matter that was referred to by both cape Schley and Commander Wilde upon their return from the jake a oy months ago. They are also in favor of improvements in fog signal plants that will admit of signals being sounded immediately after the fog sets in. - At some points on the lakes there is great delay in putting ae fos Siena apparatus in operation. A new buoy and coal depot at Ens Bae t ae 2 new general survey of-the lakes are also recommended Ry mes ade Folger. The supplemental buoy and coal depot at the Sault wi 'ose a edly be built, and-it may be that a gas manufacturing Sey wil alse se established at that point, but the proposed resurvey of te dace anotnet matter. The war department made the survev that resulted au Fae ee tion of the charts now generally in use, and which are core ' nae to year. It is not.probable, anyhow, that the light-house boar have much influence in the matter of a new lake survey. Tr Pe . The last congress appropriated $15,000 for the est SES er ae new branch hydrographic offices on the lakes, viz., at me oe oe Marie and Buffalo, and the hydrographic officials Haye een 2 eee rangements.as rapidly as circumstances will permit tor open fo: eae fices. Ensign C. T. Jewell, son of Commander dene ae a Te young navel. officer who has been: selected for thesauite Bs ete Galas more than' probable that the Buffalo office will be in the ere oy the ing. Mr. Jewell is now spending a few days with eee a aenanites Cleveland office, so as to become familiar with the details o of a branch hydrographic station. , z Marie will ed be mn Peeling order until next spring. | Ne Ue havy are requiring quite a large number of ore i'. in opening these Probably has as much as anything else to do with delay ce petuch and Offices. It will be expected, of course, that the ee ae ae Sault Ste. Marie, or the owners of the 'buildings a IRE scat cera': ydrographic offices will be located, will provide for et ee as has been the cas¢ in Chicago, Cleveland and Buffalo. a) hy en ey <. Brown, Mr. Fayette Brown, father of Harvey H. Brown arate ane 6 and well-known as a-pioneer of the iron industry. 1S SCV ee aoe teareg! age, but is still engaged in business and is as active as Dt es of Lake Erie, 'At this season; when ducks are plentiful around ae nee Oa eat € maybe found pulling his own boat and hand er puenees who take to fase as any of the young men in the ore and vesse this kind of sport. \ - CLEVELAND, 0., OCTOBER 28, 1897. The offices at Duluth and Sault Ste. | No. 18. Old Range Ores.-- Ferdinand Schlesinger, ; The action of the Oliver Mining Co. (Carnegie-Oliver combination) in paying big prices for leases of the Norrie and Tilden mines, which are leading producers on the Gogebic range, has caused considerable discus- sion in Cleveland iron circles regarding the value of the better class of - mines on the old ranges of the Lake 'Superior region. A -fuss has been made in the newspapers about the efforts of the Carnegie interest to secure control of the Pioneer mine, one of the large properties of the Vermillion range, but this is only a small part of their operations. They have trav- eled the full length of the Lake Superior region in negotiations for mines capable of producing ores-of a kind suitable for mixture with their im---- mense deposits onthe Mesabi. This action on the part of the leading Pittsburg interest is taken, to mean that they still doubt their ability to use more than probably 45-per cent. of Mesabi ore in their principal mix- tures. feature of the ore business says: . "If the furnaces are to be limited to less than half Mesabi as it now ~-- seems after three years of effort to use a greater percentage, and after a> heavy expenditure in experiments by the largest consumers of ore, it is quite probable that the next problem will be to supply enough old-range Bessemer ore to meet the situation. Owners of old-range mines are not giving out information as to the amount of ore they have under ground, © and can hardly be expected to injure their own inteyests by doing. so, °° but I am honestly ofthe opinion that if not more than' 40 or 45 per cent. of. Mesabi is to be 118ed, we must soon seek new sources to supply ore of the old-range kind." . Thus it would seem that the mines of the Gogebic. Marquette, Ver- million and other ranges, where cost of production is heavy. and which . ~ were in .some quarters pronounced worthless when steam shovels were - put into the open pits of the Mesabi, are far more valuable todav than they | were two years ago. They are to profit from the immense: increase in rox production of iron and steel and from the inability of the leading furnace companies to use the Mesabi product in the proportion they had figured' - on. This is why the best of the old-range mines are now looked unon >, with more favor than they have been for three or four years past. It 13-28 said that the Carnegie-Oliver combination has 'offered to pay a bonus of $1,250,000 for.a twenty-year lease of the Pioneer, guaranteeing a mini- mum output of 500.000 tons annually with 85 cents a ton reyalty.::-Fatle<s--- ure in concluding thesé negotiations is due largely, it is claimed. to. Ae ferences between the fee owners and the holders of the present lease," which holds good for nine years. Ferdinand Schlesinger, once famous as the owner of the valuable Chapin and the Buffalo group of mines on the Menominee range, has al- ways professed great faith in old-range -properties, especially those on the , It is certainly wonderful that a man who has met with reverses Gogebic. of. the kind encountered by Schlesinger should ever again be heard 'of in the iron mining industry. He will hardly cut much of.a figure against -- We combinations of the Carnegie-Rockefeller kind, but he is back to the Lake Superior country again, and he holds a control of four mines, doing business with the same Milwaukee banks that claimed to have closed ~ their doors on his account in 1893. But his business is conducted on safer lines now and within limits that would have made him wealthy if ~~ applied to his operations of four or five years ago.. Among the ore dealers of 'Cleveland to whom he is well known, Ferdinand Schlesinger is very i # highly regarded in a great many respects. He 'is a shrewd manager, hard worker and very capable in matters of finance. Although his man-. ner and accent are decidedly foreign, he writes a letter that is striking on account of the clear English which it contains, and he is said to' ~~ grasp readily the various sides of a business problem, no matter how -»*. * difficult it may be. Was he not right in the view he took of Gogebic mlines in competition with the Mesabi? He has grown in favor of late ° among business associates, but his chances of great success in the bus- iness now are nothing to.what they were when he began, eight or ten The four mines which he now owns are the Newport, Palms" ears ago. ie er on the Gogebic and the Dunn on the Menominee range. Two- of these, the Newport and Palms, are capable of producing more than 300,000 tons of very good ore annually. About $200,000 is said to have been paid for the Newport. F i The proposition of Gen. Supt. Wheeler of Sault Ste. Marie to close the American canal about Nov 15, so as to facilitate work on the new guard gate that is to be-constructed during. the winter, directs 'attention to the possibility of the Sault river being closed by ice almost any year before the middle of November: -- [n the fall of 1880, just prior to the opening of the Weitzel lock, it was proposed to close the canal Nov. 15, so as to begin work early on a cofferdam. Then there was no Canadian canal and the vessel owners kicked, but the last boat came down the 14th: .That~ night a cold wave arrived and the next few days the mercury was down at zero. There was barely time in which to complete the cofferdam before winter was at hand. Detroit.and Chicago boats, which brought supplies tothe 'Soo,' hurriedly discharged their cargoes on the docks... The goods were not even checked off, as the boats were in great haste to get out of the river before thick ice formed, but they were unable to proceed further than Lake George, and were compelled to return and go into winter quar- ters. This happened prior to the 21st of the month, and the ice did not break up until spring.--Sault Ste. Marie News. Gas buoys in the Sault river fill be removed about Nov. 15 to 20. One of the leading ore sales agents of Cleveland discussing this -- 3