Democratic Sentinel, Volume 19, Number 25, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 28 June 1895 — CANADA HAS ALL THE NICKEL. [ARTICLE]

CANADA HAS ALL THE NICKEL.

And This May Give Her Control of the Shipbuilding Industry. “When nickel steel comes Into general use for the construction of vessels, as It undoubtedly will,” said a Canadian gentleman In Chicago the other day, “Canada will, In a sense, control the shipbuilding Industry, because, so far as is at present known, there is very little nickel outside of the Dominion, while we have nickel-bearing pyrites practically without limit That whole vast stretch of territory reaching from Lake Superior to Labrador is rich In it and will produce hundreds of thousands of tons of It annually for an unlimited period whenever the demand requires it

“How will this control the shipbuilding industry? Why, in this way. It has been demonstrated by conclusive tests at your proving grounds at Sandy Hook and elsewhere that steel, mixed w ith, say, 5 per cent, of nickel, is double the strength of ordinary steel. In the construction of men-of-war the advantage is obvious, and in building merchant vessels the benefit to be derived from the use of nickel-steel is equally plain, as it will enable them to be built much lighter than they are now% which means less coal and less engine power with an equal amount of security and equal amount of speed. It will only be a few years when a wooden vessel in the port of Chicago will l>e something of a novelty and the new vessels will before very long, for the reasons Indicated, be made of nickelsteel, and this will be the only metal in demand for the purpose at your great shipbuilding yards in Cleveland, Detroit, South Chicago and other points. “Another advantage which steel having nickel in its composition possesses over ordinary steel is that it will not corrode and that, barnacles cannot get a foothold on it, so that nickel-steel ship's bottom will never require to be scraped.”