James Oliver Curwood

“ Six years ago the American Shipbuilding Company, the greatest trust of its kind in the world, held undisputed sway over the Lakes. It knew no competition. No combination of capital had dared to grapple with it. With eleven huge construction yards strung along the Lakes between Buffalo, Duluth, and Chicago, it held a monopoly of the shipbuilding industry. It was at this time that one of the country’s great industrial generals sprang up in Detroit. Then he was practically unknown; now as a leader and master of men, he is known in every city of this country where iron and steel are used. ”

“ For centuries the oceans have been regarded as the realm of romance and mystery. In this age, the youths of Chicago, of New York, Cincinnati, or Denver, and even of Lake cities, search public libraries for tales of the South Seas and of the great Pacific; even the youngster whose every day has been spent on the shores of one of the five Great Lakes seeks afar the material that satisfies his boyish imagination. ”

“ In these days of late navigation—days of fierce battles with snow, ice, and wind, days of death and destruction as they are never known upon the salt seas—is material for a generation of writers; unnumbered stories of true mystery, true romance, and true tragedy, which, if fed to the nation in popular form, would be of immeasurable value to lovers of the literature of adventure. Into what a fascinating tale of mystery, for example, might the loss of the Queen of the West be turned! ”

“ How many, for instance, know that to-day Duluth is the second greatest freight-shipping port on earth; that London, the capital of the British Empire, queen of the world’s commerce for many years, has abdicated in favour of a port so remote from the heart of British commercial enterprise that it is doubtful if fifty thousand of the five million people of London have ever heard of the name of the city which has taken the place of the world’s metropolis in the list of the great harbours of the world? ”

“ Wherever ships are built the stocks are filled. From the uttermost end of Erie to the shipyards of the north—in Buffalo, Lorain, Cleveland, Toledo, Detroit, West Superior, Chicago, and Manitowoc—the making of American ships is being rushed as never before. In the larger yards powerful arc-light systems allow of work by night as well as by day. The roaring of forges, the hammering of steel, the tumult of labouring men, and the rumbling of giant cranes are seldom stilled. With almost magical quickness a ten-thousand-ton monster of steel rises on the stocks—and is gone. ”

“ And all this time he will see rising along the white stretches of shore the smoke of great cities, and hundreds of miles of wooded beach, where unnumbered millions might pass their summer holidays without crowding. And when he enters the Detroit River he looks out upon quiet Canadian shores and little “Sleepy Hollow” towns, still characterised by the quaint French atmosphere and peacefulness that marked them a century ago.
Now he begins to see the crowded, noisy, jostling pleasures of popular river resorts; then comes Detroit, the greatest excursion city on the Lakes. ”

“ And so it goes, from end to end of the Lakes, every mile fraught with interest, every hour offering the traveller something new of scenery or history. At no time is there the monotonous sameness of ocean travel, and even night is to be regretted because of the things which are passed then and cannot be seen. And this life of the Lakes is not, like that of the salt seas, open only to those of means. ”

“ Each year the rivalry between builders is increasing as to whose ships shall possess the finest “guests’ quarters.” Behind the smoke and dirt and unseemly red steel that are seen from shore or deck, a fortune has been spent in those rooms over the small doors of which one reads the word “Owners.” You may climb up the steel side of the ship, you may explore it from stem to stern, but not until you are a “guest”—not until the “key to the ship” has been handed to you, are its luxuries, its magnificence, its mysteries, clearly revealed. ”

“ The backbone of American manufacturing industry—the mainspring of our commercial prestige abroad—is iron; and it is this iron, gathered in the one-time wildernesses of the Northland and brought down a thousand miles by ship, that stands largely for the greatness of the Lakes to-day. “Gold is precious, but iron is priceless,” said Andrew Carnegie. “The wheels of progress may run without the gleam of yellow metal, but never without our ugly ore.” And the Lake country, or three little patches of it, produce each year nearly a half of the earth’s total supply of iron. ”

“ The din is fearful, the heat in the furnace-room insufferable, and when once each half-minute a furnace door is opened for fresh fuel, and writhing torrents of fire and light illumine the gloomy depths, the tenderfoot passenger looks up nervously to where his eyes catch glimpses of light and freedom far above him. And then, in the explanation of all this—in the reason for these hundreds of tons of whirling, crashing, thundering steel—there comes the greatest surprise of all. ”

“ It is not of such isolated places as the great resorts that I shall speak first. They play their part, and an important one, in the summer life of the Lakes; but it is to another phase of this life, one which is almost entirely unknown, that I wish to call attention. The man who does not have to count the contents of his pocket-book when he leaves home will find his holiday joys without much trouble. But how about the man who works for a small salary, and who with his restricted means wishes to give his wife and children the pleasures of a real vacation? ”

“ Origin and Early History While the modern romance of the Great Lakes, the vast commerce that has grown upon them, the great cities along their shores, and the part they have played in the history of the last generation form, to my mind, one of the most absorbing and at the same time one of the most fruitful subjects for the writer of to-day, it is to the “dim and mysterious ages of long ago” that one must allow his imagination to be carried, if he would understand, in its fullest measure, the part that our Inland Seas should hold within the hearts of the American people. ”

“ Steam shovels, weighing from sixty to seventy-five tons each, do the work. Like a great hand one of these shovels dips down into the soft mass of ore, buries its great dipper until it holds from four to eight tons, and then, groaning and rumbling, slowly lifts its burden aloft, swings it over a car, and the actual work of mining is done. A thousand times a day it will repeat this operation, lifting from three thousand to eight thousand tons of ore. ”

“ In a hundred other ways that I might describe does one see life on a Great Lakes freighter as on none of the vessels of the salt seas. It is a life distinct from all others, a life that is building a people within itself—the people of the Lake breed. ”

“ It dawns with their making. Unnumbered thousands of years ago, before the glaciers of the Ice Age crept over the continent; when prehistoric monsters, still living in a tropical world, roamed throughout what is now the Lake region; and when man, if he existed at all, was in his crudest form, the Great Lakes were still unborn. Where their ninety-five thousand square miles of surface now afford the world’s greatest highways of water commerce there were then vast areas of plain, of highland and plateau, rising at times to the eminence of mountains. ”

“ The elect of fortune and fashion becomes a common American as soon as he touches a plank of a Lake vessel, rubs elbows with the everyday crowd, smokes his cigars in company with travelling men, rural merchants, and clerks, forgets himself in this mingling with people of red blood and working hands—and enjoys himself in the experience. ”

“ Looking ahead for a dozen centuries, one cannot see where there can be a monopoly of grain transportation, either by railroad or ship. The water highways are every man’s property; a few thousand dollars—a ship—and you are your own master, to go where you please, carry what you please, and at any price you please. For all time, in the carrying of grain from field to mouth, the Great Lakes will prove themselves the poor man’s friend. To bring this poor man’s bushel of wheat over the one thousand miles from Duluth to Buffalo by Lake now costs only two cents. ”

“ The great East, with its railroad and manufacturing development, has been supplied with its steel—from Pittsburg. Now it is the West and South-west, and the Orient, to which our great volumes of steel trade will turn. It is Duluth’s chance. Because the ore is at her doors, she can turn out iron and steel cheaper than any other city in the world; and she is the nearest distributing point to the West. This movement to Duluth is inevitable. The world’s steel industry has been constantly moving and changing. ”

“ Men seized their wives and flung them overboard, leaping after them to destruction; human beings fought like demons for possession of chairs, boards, or any objects that might support them in the water, and others, crazed by the terrible scenes about them,106 dashed into the roaring flames, their dying shrieks mingling with the hopeless cries of those who still struggled for life. From the shore scores of helpless people, without boats, or any means of assistance, watched the frightful spectacle, and strong swimmers struck out to give what aid they could. ”

“ The Lakes breed great men—and they breed great fleets. How many of our millions have heard of J. C. Gilchrist and the Gilchrist fleet?—a man in one way unique in the marine history of the world, and a fleet which, if plying between New York and Liverpool, would be one of the present-day sensations. Gilchrist, like Coulby, “worked up from the depths,” and to-day, as the head of the Gilchrist Transportation Company, he holds down seventy-five distinct jobs! ”

“ Out of a population of more than four hundred thousand people, the home-owning population is only thirty thousand below the total registered vote. As a convention city she has only one rival, and that is Detroit. Nature has showered blessings upon her without stint. And I confidently believe that many of the young men and women of Buffalo will live to see the day when one city will stretch along the entire Niagara frontier, with a population exceeded by that of only one or at most two other American cities. ”

“ At this end of the great ore industry the wonderful mechanism for the handling of cargoes is even more astonishing than that of the Northland. The ore carrier is run under a huge unloading machine which thrusts steel arms down into the score or more hatches of the vessel, and without the assistance of human hands the cargo is emptied so quickly that the uninitiated observer stands mute with astonishment. ”

“ While towns and cities and the ten thousand vessels of the seas are sweeping past, while for a thousand miles the scenes are constantly changing—from thickly populated country to virgin wilderness, from the heat of summer on Erie to the chill of autumn on Superior,—the vessel itself remains a wonderland to the one who has never taken the trip before. ”

“ While the commerce of the Lakes is increasing by tremendous bounds in other ways, people are now, perhaps unknowingly, witnessing the rapid extinction of one of their oldest and most romantic branches of traffic—the lumber industry; and each year, as this industry comes nearer and nearer to its end, the price of lumber climbs higher and higher, home-owners become fewer in comparison with other years, and fleets and lumber companies go out of existence or direct their energies into other channels. ”

“ Unnumbered thousands of tourists travel over the Lakes to-day with hardly a conception of the unrevealed interests about them. What attracts them is104 the beauty and freshness of the trip; when they go upon the ocean they wonder, and dream, and read history. Tragedy has its allurement for the pleasure-seeker, as well as romance; and while certain phases of tragedy are always regrettable, it is at least interesting to be able at times to recall them. ”

“ Duluth is approximately midway in the continent, with a clear waterway soon to reach to the ocean, and with the great West behind her already webbed, with Duluth as the centre, by thirty-seven thousand miles of rail; and Buffalo, with sixty million people within five hundred miles of her City Hall, with fifteen great trunk-lines entering the city, with the greatest electrical power of the age at her doors, with “one hand on the ocean and the other on the Inland Seas,” holds a position which no other city can ever hope to attain. ”

“ The more one comes in touch and sympathy with the lives of these men of the Lakes the more one’s interest increases; and it is not until one eats and drinks with them aft, and secures their confidence and friendship, that he is let into the secrets of the inner and home life of these red-blooded people, which is unlike the life of any other seafaring men in the world. ”

“ Nothing that money can secure is omitted. In the words of a builder: “The modern freighter is like a modern hotel—only much more luxuriously furnished.” There is an electric light system throughout21 the ship; the cabins are equipped with telephones; there is steam heat; there are kitchens with the latest cooking devices, elegantly appointed dining-rooms; there are state-rooms which are like the apartments in a palace, and other things which one would not expect to see beyond the black and forbidding steel walls of these fortune-makers of the Lakes. ”

“ One more trip from Duluth may mean thousands of dollars. The season is late—too late. But freight rates are high. No risk, no gain, argues the ship-owner, as he sends his vessel from port. Those are days of anxiety for captain, crew, and owner. In a few hours the clear sky may give place to banks of snow clouds. The air turns bitter cold. Darkness falls in the middle of the afternoon. The snow descends in dense clouds. It is far worse than the blackest night, for it shuts out the lights along the treacherous shores as completely as a wall of mountains. ”

“ This is true of passenger ships as well as of freighters, and the strongest proof of this fact lies in the almost inconceivably small loss of life among travellers on the Lakes. There was a time when the marine tragedies of the Inland Seas were appalling, and if all the ships lost upon them were evenly distributed there would be a sunken hulk every half-mile over the entire thousand-mile waterway between Buffalo and Duluth. But those days are gone. Lake travel has not only become the cheapest in the world, but the safest as well. ”