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1901.] MARINE REVIEW. 19 COPPER SMELTING IN LAKE SUPERIOR. A RAPID HISTORICAL SKETCH OF THE DEVELOPMENT OF SMELTING WORKS --NO PREVIOUS RECORD OF THE FIRST ATTEMPT TO SMELT COPPER. At the recent meeting of the Lake Superior Mining Institute Supt. James B. Cooper of the Calumet & Hecla Smelting Works read a paper upon the subject of "Copper Smelting in Lake Superior,'"' which is inter- esting for the historical information it contains. In part he said: Of the first two attempts to smelt (not refine) copper in the Lake district I have found no published record. These were both made in Ke- weenaw county and Mr. John Senter has given me the following data re- garding them: In 1846, the year Mr. Senter came to Eagle river, a fur- nace was built on the Gratiot river, a short distance west of the present main road: Prof. James T. Hodge built and ran this furnace two very short campaigns. The selected rock, estimated to contain at least 20 per cent. copper, was the material smelted and the net result of the second run of this furnace was 3-5 per cent. copper. No further smelting was at- tempted after this disappointing result. The second furnace was built (probably in 1847) by the Suffolk Mining Co. to smelt gray ore of cop- per. This furnace was located about seven miles southeast of Eagle river. This ore was said to be so high in iron, and I surmise so low in copper, that it was impossible to smelt it in this furnace. Mr. Senter fixes the date of this furnace by his having attended its sale in November, 1848. In 1849 the Ohio and Isle Royale Mining Co. built a furnace on Isle Royale which was never put in blast. The product of the lake copper mines had to be shipped to smelting works already established in eastern states. Until late in 1848 probably all the lake copper was smelted by two works--the Revere 'Copper Works of Boston and the Baltimore (Md.) Works. During these years practically all the product of the lake copper mines consisted of mass and "kiln" copper, as the calcined barrel work was called. The mass was an entirely new proposition to the smelters as the entire world's product of copper, with small exceptions, had previously been made from the ores of copper. All refining furnaces had the small side door openings only for charging the ores or pigs ot copper. At the Baltimore works a large side door opening was made and the masses were dragged into the furnace and through a door on the opposite side to a windlass. The larger door was bricked up after the charging of the furnace. The inevitable result of this method of charging the mass cop- per was serious damage to the furnace hearths, though they were pro- tected as much as possible with ore and wooden skids. ASKED $80 A TON FOR SMELTING COPPER. In 1848 Dr. C. G. Hussey of Pittsburg, one of the directors of the - Cliff Mining Co., went to the Revere works to make arrangements for the smelting of their product. It is said the price asked was $80 per ton for masses. This rate was so high that Hussey & Howe of Pittsburg decided to build a smelting works. Their first experiment seems to have been made with the object of reducing masses to sizes small enough to charge easily into an ordinary side door refining furnace. They placed the mass in an ordinary "cannon" furnace of the Fort Pitt foundry of Pittsburg, having first removed the arch or roof. This arch was then rebuilt and the copper tapped into sand beds. The slow heating and melting of this mass evidently made an excessive quantity of slag high in copper. It is also said they suspended a mass by chains in a blast furnace and attempted to melt it. Result, broken chain and a demolished furnace. However, in 1848, Hussey & Howe built a reverberatory refining furnace with a mov- able roof or cover; this cover being a little larger than the charging hole in the arch of the furnace. This became the universal method at all works smelting lake copper. In 1850 J. G. Hussey & Co. built a copper smelt- ing works at Cleveland. They evidently expected to smelt all the copper they could secure, but in the competition with the Detroit and Portage Lake works were not successful. Up to the time of closing this works in 1867 they had smelted very little except the product of the Cliff and National mines, in which Hussey, Howe & Co. were heavily interested. John R. Grout, the originator of the Detroit works, had been in the lake copper district, as stated in Mr. Pope's paper (see Marine Review, March 28), spending the winter of 1846-7 near the head of Torch lake; he decided that Detroit was the proper location for a smelting works for lake copper. Like the others he tried the experiment of smelting rich rock direct in a cupola. This trial was made in the small iron cupola of the Smith foundry at Birmingham, Oakland county, Mich., where the old inhabitants still remember the characteristic red color of the slag from the amygdaloid rock. 'Mr. Grout went to Waterbury, Conn., then, as now, one of the great copper consuming cities of the United States, and four of the largest brass manufacturing companies furnished the capital necessary to build a worxs consisting of one refining furnace and one cupola for reduction of the slags. These brass companies had had serious trouble to buy copper that was even in quality and equal to their require- ments in alloys or in sheet copper where .great tensile strength and elas- ticity were demanded. The principal object of these companies in start- ing the works was to secure a brand of copper on which they could al- ways depend. This smelting company was called the Waterbury & De- troit (Copper Co. and the Detroit works was completed and a small quan- tity (about 150 tons) of copper was refined in the fall of 1850. Here, on May 10, 1851, my father, James R. Cooper, began work and is now clos- ing his fiftieth year of continuous refining of copper. In 1860 the Port- age Lake Smelting Works was built directly opposite Houghton under the supervision of the Messrs. Williams. At this works they began refin- ing copper early in 1861. It was well patronized by the local mines. The product of the Calumet & Hecla mines was sent to this works. They built one stack on the hill side back of the works and four of the refining furnaces were connected to this by an underground flue. FIRST CONSOLIDATION OF COPPER WORKS. In July, 1867, the Portage Lake Works with its better central location in the mining district, and the Detroit works, with its prestige as to brand of copper, were consolidated as the Detroit & Lake Superior Cop- per Co., with Mr. Grout as general manager. My father came to Hough- ton at this time as superintendent and remained one year, returning to the Houghton works as superintendent in October, 1873, and at the death of Mr. Grout in 1881, succeeded him as general manager. Between 1860- 67 two small works were built. One at Lac-La-Belle, Keweenaw county, by one of the Messrs. Williams. The exact dates of the building, starting and closing down of these works I have not yet secured. The second ~ works of this period was built by a Major Pont Alba at Ontonagon, and from about 1863 to 1867 was in commission. From 1867 to 1887 the D. & L. S. C. Co. refined the entire product of lake copper except a small amount smelted by the Houghton rolling mills (the Lake Superior Native Copper Works), whose one refining plant and cupola were put in commis- sion in 1882. The mineral smelted at this works was alniwst entirely from small mines controlled by the owners of the rolling mills. In 1886 the Calumet & Hecla smelting works at South Lake Linden, owned jointly by the Detroit & Lake Superior Copper 'Co. and the Calumet & Hecla Mining Co., was built and smelting at this works began June 1, 1887. The Detroit works were closed finally in January, 1887. In 1888, the Dollar Bay Smelting Works were built by the Tamarack-Osceola Manufacturing Co. and smelted copper of the Tamarack, Osceola and other mines con- trolled by the. same management. These were consolidated with the Houghton works of the D. & L. S. Copper Co. in August, 1890, as the Lake Superior Smelting Co. In 1891 the Calumet & Hecla Co. built the Buffalo Smelting Works, where, since 1892, a large part of the C. & H. product has been smelted. In May, 1898, the Tamarack & Osceola Min- ing Co. bought the Lake Superior Smelting Co.'s works, thus, like the Calumet '& Hecla Mining Co., acquiring their own smelting works, but continuing to do custom smelting for other mines of the district. In this same month of May, 1898, the Quincy Mining Co. began the erection of their own smelting works on the stamp sands of the old Pewabic mill, J. R. Cooper supervised the construction of the Quincy works and con- tinues in charge. Smelting was begun Dec. 1, 1898. REPUTATION OF THE LAKE BRAND CF COPPER. This completes a hasty sketch of the various works to date. The continuation of the control of the refining of lake copper by the manage- ment of the old Waterbury and Detroit companies is truly the survival of the fittest and the reputation of the "lake" brand of copper was made by them. There is no doubt that the lake copper carefully refined is the only "best" copper. The peculiarly tough quality which is characteristic of the native copper is retained to a great degree in the refined copper. From the very beginning at the Detroit works to the present time this copper has been refined by the best known methods to retain in the copper all the good qualities possible. In the comparatively recent years the increasing use of copper for electrical purposes has added a new and most severe requirement as the copper must now be refined so as to get the highest conductivity possible. The progress toward better and more even refinement has been continuous, 'the variations in "set" now being allowed being very much less than formerly. During this fifty years the refining of copper has passed from an imperfect process to an exact science. For many purposes the lake copper cannot be successfully replaced by the electrolytic, its nearest competitor. For example, cartridge metal, which demands a brass of great tenacity and elasticity. I doubt if this brass can be made from any other brand than lake and always be equal to the. present government re- quirements; but for this very reason, better and more even refining will always be demanded of the lake copper, as it has been in the past, for the manufacturer will use lake for his best work where the tests demanded are unusually high. POSITIONS ON THE NAVAL REGISTER. Of special interest to officers of the navy is an order issued this week by Secretary Long announcing their relative positions on the naval regis- ter. The order was necessary because of the provision in the last naval _ appropriation law directing that the advancement of officers of the navy and marine corps for service rendered during the war with Spain should not interfere with the regular promotion of officers otherwise entitled to promotion. The department has interpreted the law to mean that an officer who has been advanced by numbers for services rendered during the war with Spain is not to be regarded as additional to the number al- lowed by law in his grade until he is promoted to a higher erade than the one in which he was when he received advancement. The department holds that the purpose of the law is not to hasten the promotion of officers advanced for war service, but to prevent such advancements from inter- fering with the promotion of others. The special order shows that sixty-six officers of the navy and five officers of the marine corps were rewarded for gallantry displayed during and since the war with Spain. Of the naval officers, three are rear admir- als, eleven captains, twenty commanders, ten lieutenant commanders, thirteen lieutenants, six lieutenants junior grade and three ensigns. The marine corps officers rewarded include one lieutenant colonel, one major and three captains. Although so many officers were advanced, under the department's ruling that an officer only becomes an additional when pro- moted to a higher grade than the one in which he was when he received advancement, there are comparatively few additionals. They include three rear admirals, F. J. Higginson, R. D. Evans and H. C. Taylor; three captains, Asa Walker, C. C. Todd and W. J. Swinburne; two commanders, W. J. Bayley and E. H. Merritt; two lieutenant commanders, H. McL. P. Huso and G. W. McElroy, and three lieutenants, E. E. Hayden (re- appointed on the active list by special act of congress), H. H. Ward and W. S. Crosley. Only one officer of marine corps, Lieut. Col. G. D. Elliott, is designated as an additional. Admiral Dewey, by the order, is the ranking officer of the navy. John Adams Howell is the senior rear admiral; W. S. Schley is No. 5 and William T. Sampson No. 7 on the list of senior rear admirals. Frank Wildes is the ranking captain and A. B. H. Lillie the junior captain; W. H. Emery is at the head of the list of commanders; John Hubbard is the ranking lieutenant commander; W. I. Burdick, the senior lieutenant; J. S. Doddridge, the senior lieutenant, junior grade, and T, D. Parker, the senior ensign. i Pan-American exposition rates to Buffalo are in effect April 30 via the Nickel Plate road at one-and-one-third fare for the round trip, good to return within fifteen days. A rate of one fare for the round trip will be made good going on Tuesdays in May and returning within five days. Write, wire, 'phone or call on nearest agent, or E. A. Akers, C. P. & T. A., Cleveland, O. 47, May 30.