Evening Republican, Volume 21, Number 235, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 19 October 1917 — WAR BRINGS BIG IRADE CHANGES [ARTICLE]

WAR BRINGS BIG IRADE CHANGES

Resources of United States Searched as Never Before to Meet New Demands. RIVER TRAFFIC IS INCREASED Upper Reaches of the Mississippi Help Relieve the Congestion on the Railroads—Strontium Ore in Demand. r New York. —One of the most interesting and important developments in the United States at the present time is the manner t in which commerce and industry are gradually adjusting and tensing themselves under the full load of the war strain; curtailing activities here, speeding up there, and reaching out at some points, under the pressure of new needs, to create entire new industries. In industry the resources of the United States are being searched as never before to meet the new demands, and mineral wealth Which has always been there against the time of need, but never before called upon, is being developed, while In commerce new processes, new economies and new efficiency, involving no new discoveries, but latent possibilities in time of peace, are being permanently added to the wealth of the t nation under the pressure of unprecedented demand. *

The whole process is too vast and varied to be seen clearly at one time, but there are several means by which occasional glimpses can be gained. One of these is by the reports of the department of the interior on the mineral resources of the United States, which continually describe the development of new mining activities in metals and chemicals, whose deposits have been known for years, but whose possibilities had not been fully recognized. Another is in the pages of the various technical journals, in which, every week, there is at least one story of a new commercial or industrial idea which has beeh added to the national machinery. • On the Mississippi. In new traffic channels it Is Iron Age which repprts that for the first" time —only a short while moreover—the upper Mississippi has-been opened to ore and coal traffic on a big scale. The Mississippi has been big enough, for years, to carry far more heavy, slow traffic than Its upper reaches, as far as St. Paul, the head of navigation, than ever, apparently, anyone

thought of putting upon it. Ore trains and coal trains have moved along its banks—for years, moving the freight at a cost per ton mile far beyond the demands of the river, but it took the war to make people realize the full value of the stream. But now that war has come, and the railroads of the entire country are under such a strain as they never before had to bear, people in St. Paul and all the river towns as far down as St. Louis have suddenly perceived that the old Mississippi must do her share. And quite recently six new steel barges, carrying 3,000 tons of coal —the largest cargo ever hauled to the head of navigation on the river—arrived at St. Paul. the vanguard of a new fleet. The development of an entirely new mining industry within the United States, under pressure of the war, is told in a recent bulletin of the Geological survey, on “Strontium In 1916.” 'S For many years large deposits of strontium ore, In the form of celestite crystals (strontium sulphate) and strontianite (strontium carbonate) have been known to exist, often beside beds of limestone which were being actively quarried, in Michigan and Ohio along the shores of Lake Erie, Schoharie county, New York, in West Virginia and Texas, and in California and Arizona. Strontium salts were used in beet-sugar refining, but far more th the manufacture oT-flreworks, because of the brilliant crirfison flame they gave. Market for Strontium. Before the war, however, the market for strontium was so limited, and being confined, moreover, to the Atlantic seaboard, imports of strontium ore from Europe were cheaper than the freight rates from California and Arizona, the only deposits which had ever been worked commercially. The war, however, changed all this In two ways. In the first place, K created a new and tremendous demand for strontium, magnesium, and barium, for vast quantities of signal rock’ ets, flares, etc., both at the front and on the sea. Moreover, here at home the increase in freight traffic on our railroads, due to war demands, necessitated a considerable Increase in the use of signal flares here also.

The new industry was getting on its. feet in 1916. In 1914 about 2,000 short tons of strontium ore had been consumed by American fireworks manufacturers, the commonest form of the refined product being strontium nitrate at around 10 cents a pound or less. Of this 2,000 pounds, the proportion o f domestic ore was so small as not to be worth reporting. In 1916 the consumption of strontium ores had risen nearly a 100 per cent; the price had caused the huge strontium deposits in California and Arizona to be opened and worked for the first time in earnest, and upward of 250 tons of strontium had already been shipped.