The following text may have been generated by Optical Character Recognition, with varying degrees of accuracy. Reader beware!

III UTIUTUUTAUUUUUU NATIONAL —— OE e, I ui TMA VOL. 47 CLEVELAND FEBRUARY, 1917 NEW YORK No. 2 ASS ow lLake Interests Nearly 15 Per Cent More Bulk Fecok Was Handled on the Great Lakes Last Year, With Slightly More Capacity AST YEAR will stand forth in the annals of the Great Lakes as a year of almost continuous surprises. The vessel men, to all practical pur- poses, found sufficient bottoms to square with the unprecedented demand. The shippers were surprised as the navigation season drew near its close, to find that they were going to move about all the freight they had to transport. The lower lake docks surprised themselves, and all other lake interests as well, by furnishing splendid dispatch during the crucial period of the season. Supplementary surprises were found in the greater depths of water; the comparative free- dom from serious delays through storms or accidents ; the rapidly mounting operating expenses which robbed the long term contracts, opened, of much of their attractiveness ; usually long navigation season. The ability of the wonderful lake fleet to meet and satisfy a demand far beyond its tested capacity was as great a surprise to the fleet operators as to the shippers. Few men, familiar with conditions on the Great Lakes, had the hardihood last spring to feel, let alone express, much optimism concerning the pros- pects of transferring between upper and lower lake ports, the immense tonnages of ore, grain and coal, that were piling up. It required not one, but four and five months of successively record- breaking freight movements to change pessimism to hope and then to confidence. The lake fleet was truly considered as the neck of the bottle, but the bottle proved to be the shape of a container for milk and not for champagne. Everyone Had to Do Their Bit One element of 1916’s record that was not a surprise was the huge tonnages of freight that awaited transportation. It was the successful transportation of this freight that occasioned surprise, not the volume of the freight. Last winter, fleet managers, freight shippers, dock operators, ship repair yards, railroad chiefs, tug owners, and, in fact, all the elements of the complex structure which has grown up about the and the un- made before the season - 37 Great Lakes, knew that they must prepare for a season far surpassing any one in their history. The completed figures for the year’s freight movement, pub- lished elsewhere in this issue, mutely testify to the adequacy of these preparations. One of the first preliminary steps taken by the vessel interests was to secure a line upon the fleet’s carrying capacity. An exhaustive study was made of the various lake fleets, involving the computation of the capacity and speed of every vessel, together with the probable number of trips each would make in a season. The physical condition of the fleet and the amount of time each steamer probably would be kept in the ore trade, was also determined. Facing a Discouraging Outlook The results of this study were not encouraging. | The estimates of the lake fleet’s ore-carrying capacity, _ which were made as a result of this computation, showed a considerable variance. One fleet operator. placed the total ore-carrying capacity at 57,000,000 tons, while other estimates ranged as low as 51,000,000 tons. Sentiment finally crystallized around 53,000,000 tons as the probable maximum ore ton- nage which the fleet could handle. The blast fur- naces dependent upon the Lake Superior district for their iron ore were operating at a pace that insured a consumption of nearly 57,000,000 tons of ore in 1916. With heavy tonnages of coal and grain awaiting transportation, and the ore movement apparently fore- doomed to fall below the demand, the outlook was anything but promising. The problem was attacked with characteristic vigor. During the enforced winter idleness, the boats were put in splendid condition and in some instances, ves- sels that had not operated for several seasons, were overhauled and made ready. Several unfavorable factors contributed to the general uneasiness felt as the open season approached. The heavy demand for labor from all parts of the country threatened to complicate the problem of securing sufficient crews to