By modern methods the cars carrying the ore from the mines are run up trestle-work into positions above the ore bins high over the docks. The mammoth ore carrying boats are merely steel shells with quarters for crew and machinery at bow and stern, and hatches built with exact twelve foot centers between. They are tied alongside the dock, long steel chutes, also spaced twelve feet apart, are lowered along most of the length of the boat and the ore slides into the vessel’s hold evenly all along as it has to do, else the buoyancy of lighter parts of the boat might break the frail shell. The entire load of 10,000 tons of ore is ordinarily taken aboard in less than one hour. Pulling out immediately the vessel traverses Lake Superior, the Sault Sainte Marie canal, Lake Michigan or Lakes Huron and Erie as the case may be, and ties up at the dock at destination. Years ago it would have been unloaded by men with buckets or wheel-barrows, requiring some days at best. Now, however, the hatches are uncovered and several ore unloaders with huge clam shell buckets taking as high as fifteen tons of ore at a “bite” descend like vultures upon it. Within four or five hours the boat is again empty with no manual labor having been done upon the ore from the mine to the furnace pile with the exception of a little heaping up of the ore in the corners of the boat’s hold, which the ore unloaders could not reach. [Illustration: HOOVER & MASON UNLOADERS AT THE ILLINOIS STEEL CO., SOUTH CHICAGO, ILL. ] A young man named Alexander E. Brown could not bear, in the old days, to see the ore so awkwardly unloaded, and in 1880 started the procession of ore unloading devices. There are now several successful ore unloaders of which the Brown hoist, the Hoover & Mason, and the Hulett are probably the best known. With the Hulett unloader the operator has to be an aviator, as his position is directly above the grab bucket. He descends into the hold with the bucket, comes up with it and is with it in its entire journey from the boat’s hold to the dump and back again. It must be dizzy business. [Illustration: THE HULETT UNLOADER. NOTE THE OPERATOR’S HEAD IN WHITE SPOT JUST ABOVE THE GRAB ] Time is too precious to hold the boat at the dock long enough that each bucketful, large as it is, can go directly to its final bin. It is dropped just back of the unloading machine from which it is again picked up by other buckets which carry it back toward the furnaces and deposit it in cement ore troughs awaiting further journey to the ore house, from which it goes to the furnaces. The empty ore boat immediately coals with whole car loads of the fuel dumped into chutes leading to her bunkers by the car dumper and proceeds on her way back to the mines for another cargo of ore. The round trip, including loading and unloading, requires but seven days. [Illustration: A GOOD VIEW OF THE HATCH SYSTEM OF MODERN ORE BOATS AND FOUR HULETT UNLOADERS AT WORK ]