Probably the most memorable day in the history of Duluth was April 1, 1907, for on that day official notice was received from New York that the Steel Corporation had decided to establish an iron and steel plant in Duluth. At first it was planned to cost ten million dollars. Now it is believed that much more than this will be expended. Preliminary work has already commenced, and within a year and a half it is expected that the plant will be in operation. This movement on the part of the great corporation that rules the world of steel is for several reasons the most interesting that it has ever made. For years, the ore of the North has been carried a thousand miles to the smelters of the East. To reach Pittsburg, it was not only transported that thousand miles, but was loaded three times and unloaded three times. And, meantime, while millions of dollars were being expended on the transportation of ore, while cities half-way across the continent existed and were growing because of their smelters, the city of Duluth, with the vast iron deposits at her back door, was not making a ton of steel. This is one of the mysteries which the Steel Corporation does not explain; but it is fair to assume that hitherto there has not been a sufficient market for the products of such a plant within paying reach of this port. [Illustration: Fleet of Boats in Duluth Harbour Waiting to Unload.] The new plant will bring thirty thousand people to Duluth--and this is not the end. Those who are acquainted with the situation say that it is but the first step in the making of a second Pittsburg. “The steel industry,” they say, “brought almost a million people and billions of dollars to Pittsburg--a city a thousand miles from its ore, and without natural advantages. What, then, will it mean to Duluth, with its strategic position on the great highways of commerce, with its cheap water-power, and above all with its ore ready to be dumped direct from the mine cars into the smelters?”