Ice and Mathematics

Ice on the Great Lakes is the heaviest in the memory of the oldest oldtimers. Some venerable head-shakers glumly predicted, "There won't be much doing on Superior before the middle of May."

The great Soo Locks at the eastern tip of Superior and the narrow Straits of Mackinac that connect Lake Michigan with Lake Huron are the twin bottlenecks through which 85% of the nation's vast iron ore production flows to U.S. blast furnaces. The ore moves eastward to the Soo from Minnesota's Mesabi Range, then southwest to Gary, southeast to Cleveland, Youngstown and Pittsburgh.

Even in the warmest years, ice stops this flow for some four months. Last year, with an early thaw, the Lakes opened late in March, stayed open until Dec. 9. Thereby total ore deliveries for the open season soared to almost 92,000,000 tons, a record. This year the goal is around 95,000,000 tons--and already four weeks (good for 8,650,000 tons in 1942) have been lost in the big freeze. Only counter balance: 16 new ore boats, good for monthly deliveries of about 1,000,000 tons.

Last week the car ferry Sainte Marie, queen of the icebreakers, pushed her broad armored nose through the Straits of Mackinac, heading for the Soo Locks. Behind her crept ten freighters, riding light or loaded with Ohio coal, all eager to be first to move on the Lakes in the year 1943. The icebreaker made it, but all the freighters were trapped in the icy fastness of Whitefish Bay. Even the Sainte Marie's propeller, which sucks water from under the ice so that its heavy bow can more readily pulverize it, could not free them--they just had to sit & wait for a thaw.

Meanwhile, at Escanaba, Mich., ore piled up from rail deliveries across the tip of Wisconsin. Freighter captains cursed. Fifteen ore boats nudged each other in the two-dock harbor which can load only six at a time. Escanaba had more than the weather to complain about: only recently WPB stopped work on a $58,000,000 War Department program to enlarge Escanaba loading facilities, and to provide a large-scale alternative route in case bombs or sabotage knocked out the Soo.

Steel Mathematics this year is starkly simple: 95,000,000 tons of Mesabi iron ore will make 61,250,000 tons of pig iron. Already stockpiled around lower Lake ports are some 16,000,000 tons of ore, which will add around 10,000,000 tons to the pig supply; another 10,000,000 tons of pig will come from other U.S. iron deposits. But at least 3,000,000 tons (on a pig-iron basis) must be stored up to carry steel mills through the next big freeze. That means not much more than 50,000,000 tons of pig for this year on a net basis. Added to this, 1943 's 41,500,000-ton scrap goal (half from mill waste, half purchased) is just barely enough to turn out the hoped-for 92,000,000 tons of steel ingots.

Meaning of the mathematics: short of a miracle, the U.S. this year will either dig up more scrap at home or produce less steel.

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