Preface

In this volume, it has been my object to tell of the people and of the picturesque life of the Great Lakes, and to set before my readers actual facts about the cities, the commerce, and the future of the greatest fresh-water seas in the world. For some unaccountable reason, the Great Lakes, notwithstanding the fact that more than thirty million people live in the States bordering their shores, and in spite of the still more remarkable fact that they are doing more than anything else on the American continent for the commercial progress of the nation, have been almost entirely neglected by writers. To-day there are but few people who know that one of the three greatest ports and the largest fleet of freighters in the world are on these unsalted waters; and I mention the fact in this particular place simply to bring home to the casual reader how little is known by the public at large about our Inland Seas. For this reason, I have not dealt with any single side of Lake life, but have attempted to present as many phases of it as I could; and, for the same reason, I have added a brief historical account of the Lakes at the end of the book. It has been my desire, too, that these pages, from the beginning, should prove of especial value to those many thousands all over the world who are, or may in the future be, directly interested in the Lakes in a business way; and a great deal of attention has, therefore, been given to the commercial side of my subject – statistics and facts regarding Lake commerce, the opportunities of the present day, and a forecast of what the coming years hold in store for the men who have investments, or who plan to invest in business enterprises, on or about the Great Lakes.

While dwelling upon the importance of the commercial life of the Inland Seas, I wish also to emphasise the fact that I have kept always in mind another large class of people who are keenly interested in my subject, though not from a commercial standpoint. The present volume is designed to interest this latter class by portraying another side of Lake life – the human side, the romance and the tragedy that have played their thrilling parts upon these waters; the wonders of their progress; the story of their ships, their men, their wars, for of all the pages in the history of the North American continent none are more thrilling, or more filled with the romantic and the picturesque, than those which tell the story of our fresh-water seas.

In conclusion, I wish to say that I owe a great debt of gratitude to the scores of Lake “owners,” ship-builders, and captains who have aided me, in every way possible, in the preparation of this volume, and without whose personal co-operation the writing of it would have been impossible.

J. O. C.

Detroit, Michigan, 1909.

PART I
The Ships, their Owners, their Sailors, and their Cargoes

I
The Building of the Ships

Not long ago, I was on a Lake freighter pounding her way up Huron on the “thousand-mile highway” that leads to Duluth. Beside me was a man who had climbed from poverty to millions. He was riding in his own ship. His interests burned ten thousand tons of coal a year. He was one of the ore kings of the North – as rough as the iron he dug, filled to the brim with enthusiasm and animal energy of the Lake breed; a man who had helped to make the Lakes what they are, as scores of others like him have done. Before and behind us there trailed the smoke of a dozen of the steel leviathans of the Inland Seas. I had asked him a question, and there was the fire of a great pride in his eyes when he answered.

“It would make a nation by itself – this Lake country!” he said. “And it would be America. It’s America from Buffalo to Duluth, every inch of it, and the people who are in it are Americans. That’s American smoke you see off there, and American ships are making it; they’re run by a thousand or more American captains, and they’re Americans fore ’n’ aft, too. We’ve got only eight States along the Lakes, but if we should secede to-morrow the world would find us the heart and power of the nation. That’s how American we are!”

This is the patriotism one finds in the Lake country, from the roaring furnaces of the East to the vast ore beds of Minnesota. It is representative of the spirit that rules the Inland Seas; it is this spirit that has built an empire, and is building a vaster empire to-day, along the edges of the world’s greatest fresh-water highways.

With more than thirty-four millions of people living in the States bordering on them, possessing one third of the total tonnage of North America, and saving to the people of the United States five hundred million dollars each year, or six dollars for every man, woman, and child in the country, one of the most inexplainable mysteries of the century exists in the fact that the Great Lakes of to-day are as little known to the vast majority of Americans as they were a quarter of a century ago. While revolutions have been working in almost all lines of industry, while States have been made and cities born, America’s great Inland Seas have remained unwatched and unknown except by a comparative few. Upon them have grown the greatest industries of the nation, yet the national ignorance concerning them can hardly find a parallel in history. Were they to disappear to-morrow the industrial supremacy of the republic would receive a blow from which it could never recover. The steel industry, as a dominant commercial factor, would almost cease to exist. One half of the total population of the country would be seriously affected, and America would fall far behind in the commercial race of the nations.

Notwithstanding these things, not one person in ten knows what the Great Lakes stand for to-day. While a thousand writers have sung of the greatness and romance of the watery wastes that encircle continents, none has told of those “vast unsalted seas” which mean more to eighty-five millions of Americans than any one of the five oceans. What has been written has been for those who find their commerce upon them; for the owners of ships and the masters of men; for the kings of ore and grain – a little statistical matter here and a little there, but nothing for the millions who are not at hand to feel the pulse of traffic or to see the great commercial pageant as it passes before their eyes. Even of those who live in the States bordering the Great Lakes but few know that these fresh-water highways of traffic possess the greatest shipping port in the world, that upon them floats the largest single fleet of freighters in existence, that in their great construction yards shipbuilding has been reduced to a science as nowhere else on earth, and that in their life the elements of romance and tragedy play their parts even as on the big oceans that divide hemispheres.

In a small way the general lack of knowledge of the Great Lakes is excusable, for their development has been so rapid and so stupendous that people have not yet grasped its significance. Within the last quarter of a century or less they have become the industrial magnets of the nation. Along their shores have sprung up our greatest cities, with populations increasing more rapidly than those of New York, Boston, Philadelphia, or San Francisco. In the eight States which have ports on them is more than one third of the total population of the North American continent. Along their three thousand three hundred and eighty-five miles of United States shore line will be built this year more than one half of the tonnage constructed in America, and over their highways will travel at least six times as much freight as all the nations of the world carried through the Suez Canal in 1908.

Just what this means it is hard for one to conceive when told only in figures. Perhaps in no better way can the immensity and importance of their traffic be described than by showing briefly one of the ways in which they earned a “dividend” of six dollars for every person living in the United States in 1907. This immense “dividend” did not go into the coffers of corporations, but actually, though indirectly, into the pockets of the people.

It is only fair to the Lakes and the vast interests upon them to use the figures of 1907 instead of those of 1908. In the following pages it is the author’s intention to paint conditions as they actually exist upon our Inland Seas under normal conditions. During 1908, the financial depression that swept over the entire country produced conditions upon the Lakes which, in the author’s opinion, will not be seen again for a great many years to come. “Panic figures” give a wrong impression. Those of 1908 would show a falling off of business in various branches of Lake traffic of from twenty to sixty per cent. As one of the best known vessel-men in Duluth said to me recently, “We can count that the Lakes have lost just one year of progress because of the panic.” In other words, it is highly probable that the business of the Lakes will in this year of 1909 be just about what it should have been under normal conditions in 1908, and there are many who believe that within the next two years the loss of the “panic year” will be more than discounted.

For this reason, in order to show how the Lakes earn their tremendous dividend for the people of the United States, we use the figures of 1907, when traffic was normal. In that year, for instance, it cost a little over ten cents to ship a bushel of grain from Chicago to New York by rail, and only five and one half cents by way of the Lakes and the Erie Canal. This saving on transportation of five cents a bushel is divided between the producing farmer and the consuming public. It is a “nickel on which no trust can place its hands” – and this nickel, when multiplied by the number of bushels of grain produced in Ohio, Illinois, Indiana, Wisconsin, Iowa, and Michigan, reaches the stupendous figure of ninety-eight million dollars! In the matter of iron ore the saving is still greater. Were it not for this saving all steel necessities, from rails to common kitchen forks, would advance tremendously in price, and the United States would not be able to control the steel markets of the world. To-day you can ship a ton of ore from Duluth to Ashtabula, Conneaut, or Cleveland, a distance of nearly one thousand miles, for less than you can send by rail that same ton from one of these ports to Pittsburg, a distance of only one hundred and thirty miles. In other words, while it costs about eighty cents to send a ton of ore from the vast ranges of the North to an Erie port by ship, the rail rate is seven times greater, which means that the vessels of the Great Lakes saved in 1907 on ore alone no less than one hundred and seventy-three million dollars!

In another way than in this annual saving in cost of transportation are the Lakes fighting a great and almost unappreciated battle for the people. They are to-day the country’s greatest safeguard against excessive railroad charges. They are the governors of the nation’s internal commerce, and will be for all time to come. There is not a State north of the Ohio River and east of the Rocky Mountains which is not affected by their cheap transportation, and the day is not distant when hundreds of millions of bushels of grain raised in the Canadian west will go to the seaboard by way of the lake and canal route. At the present time there are about two hundred and forty thousand miles of railroad in the United States, constructed and equipped at a cost of more than thirteen billion dollars; yet, on the basis of ton miles, the traffic on the Lakes will in 1909 be one sixth as great as on all the roads in the country.

These facts are given here to show in a small way the gigantic part the Great Lakes are playing to-day in the industrial progress of the nation. Yet, as paradoxical as it may seem, the nation itself has hardly recognised the truth. The “helping” hand that the Government has reached out has been pathetically weak. In history to come it must be recorded that great men – men of brain and brawn and courage – have “built up” the Lakes, and not the Government. And these men, scores and hundreds of them, are continuing the work to-day. Since the dawn of independence to the present time, the United States has expended for all harbours and waterways on the Great Lakes above the Niagara Falls less than ninety million dollars, yet each year this same Government hands out one hundred and forty million dollars to the army and navy and one hundred and twenty-seven million dollars to the postal service! In the face of this is the astonishing fact that, in 1907, the saving in freight rates on Lake Superior commerce alone exceeded by a million dollars the total sum expended by the Government on the Inland Seas since the day the first ship was launched upon them!

In this building of the “greater empire” of the Lake country there is now no rest. 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. Another takes its place, and even as they follow one another into the sea, racing to fill demands, there still comes the cry: “Ships – ships – we want more ships!”

In the year 1908, it is estimated that very nearly three fifths of the total ship tonnage built in the United States was constructed in these busy yards of the Great Lakes. As early as January they were choked with orders for 1908 delivery, and even that early a number of them had orders running well into 1909. A brief glance at the vessel construction of the Lakes during the six years up to and including 1907 will give a good idea of the rapid growth of this industry along the Inland Seas. In 1902, the product was forty-two vessels, thirty-two of them being bulk freighters. In 1903, forty-two of the fifty vessels built were bulk freight steamers, with a carrying capacity of 213,250 tons. In 1904, the output was only thirteen vessels, but in 1905 twenty-nine bulk freighters with a carrying capacity of 260,000 tons were built. In 1906, there were turned out from the Great Lakes yards forty-seven vessels, of which forty were bulk freighters, and in 1907, the total was fifty-six vessels, including forty bulk freighters, three package freighters, and one passenger steamer. The early months of 1908 saw contracts in force for the construction of twenty-five bulk freighters for delivery before 1909.

Taking the forty bulk freighters built in 1907, one gets a fair idea of the immensity of Lake traffic. They are but a drop in the bucket – a single year’s contribution to the great argosies of the Inland Seas; yet these forty ships have a carrying capacity of three hundred and sixty thousand tons. In other words, within four days after loading at Duluth they could be discharging this mountain of ore at Erie ports. To carry this same “cargo” by rail would require over three hundred trains of thirty cars each, or a single train seventy miles in length!

But this is not particularly astonishing when one is studying the commerce of the Great Lakes. True, it represents considerably over a half of the tonnage built in the United States during 1907, but even at that it “isn’t much to shout about,” as one builder of ships said to me. These men of the Lakes never express surprise at the wonders of the Inland Seas. They are used to them. They meet with them every day of their lives. On either coast these same “wonders” would be made much of. But the Lake breed is not the breed that boasts – unless you drag opinions from them. Why, over in Cleveland there is one man who directs the destinies of twice as many ships as the forty-eight mentioned above – a single commercial navy that can move six hundred and forty-eight thousand tons of ore in one trip, or enough to “make up” a train of sixteen thousand two hundred cars, which train would be one hundred and twenty miles in length! This man’s name is Coulby – Harry Coulby, President and General Manager of the Pittsburg Steamship Company, Lake arm of the United States Steel Corporation. There was a time when Coulby was a poor mechanic, working his ten hours a day. Then he developed “talent” and went into a shipyard draughting-room. Now he is undeniably the king of Lake shipping. His word is law in the directing of more than a hundred vessels, the greatest fleet in the world; and it is law in other ways, for it is common talk in marine circles that he (with the trust behind him) is responsible for nearly every important move on the Great Lakes. He is the eye and the ear and the mouth of the trust, and it is the trust that practically fixes the ore rates for each season, and does other things of interest. If these ships of Coulby’s were placed end to end they would reach a distance of eight miles! During the eight months of Lake navigation they can transport as much freight over the “thousand-mile highway” as the combined fleets of all nations take through the Suez Canal in twelve! Yet who has heard of Coulby? How many know of the gigantic fleet he controls? A few thousand Lake people, and that is all. A magnificent illustration is this of the national ignorance concerning the Great Lakes.

And Coulby is only one of many. The fleet he controls is only one of many. 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! Seventy-five owners have placed seventy-five ships under his generalship, and from each he receives a salary of one thousand dollars a season, or a total of seventy-five thousand dollars. He is one of the Napoleons of the Lakes. He handles ships and men like a magician; his holds are never empty; his dividends are always large. There was a day when one thousand dollars looked like a fortune to Gilchrist, and when eight dollars a week was an income of which he was mightily proud. That was when, from away down in Michigan, he turned his face northward toward the Lakes, filled with big ambition and a desire for adventure, but with little more than what he carried on his back. He got work as a sailor before the mast at forty dollars a month and board. From there he graduated to “bell hop” on a passenger steamer, and continued to graduate until the owners of great ships began to see in him those things which they themselves did not possess, and so handed over to him the destiny of the second greatest fleet of freight carriers in the world.

Such men as Coulby and Gilchrist and the ships they have would make the fame of any nation on the high seas. They and men like Captain John Mitchell, who is the head of a fleet of twenty ships, J. H. Sheadle, G. Ashley Tomlinson, and G. L. Douglas, are of the kind that are choking the Great Lakes shipyards with orders, while along the ocean seaboards stocks are rotting and builders of ocean marine are starving. Cleveland claims the headquarters of both of these immense fleets – and Cleveland is fortunate in many other things. She counts her strong men of the Lakes by the score. She is a great owner of ships, a great buyer