In the short summer season the motto of lake transportation is speed, and science has bent its energies most successfully to that end. Up in the mines of Michigan and Minnesota a big steam-operated bucket dips down into the earth and scoops from the hillside a load of iron ore which it dumps into steel cars with openings at the bottom, at a cost of five cents a ton! At the docks of Lake Superior,--and the total length of the ore docks on the lake is well over five miles,--the bottom of the car is turned aside and the whole load of red earth rushes either down long chutes directly into the holds of the vessels, or into big buildings called bins or pockets, from which it can be poured from a great height into the vessels filling them at fifteen or sixteen hatches simultaneously. Such records have been made as the loading of more than ten thousand tons of iron ore into a steamer in less than an hour and a half, and the usual time for the operation is only three or four hours. The cost of this loading is made, by the use of this machinery, less than three cents a ton. After the swiftest passage that can be made the vessel reaches the ports of the lower lakes, and there the devices for unloading are even more wonderful. From a bridgelike crane hangs a huge scoop shaped like a clam-shell, which dips down into the vessel’s hold and pulls out ten tons of ore at a time, swings it to one side and drops it on a mountainous heap of red earth. From there it is put into steel cars which, at the furnaces of Pennsylvania, are picked off the track by an immense crane as though they were mere children’s toys and dumped on the ore piles from which the furnaces are fed. In the interval while the ore was being unloaded from the hold of the vessel, coal for the return cargo has been poured in, and in an incredibly short time the freighter is started on her northward journey. So successfully have time and expense been minimized by the elimination of hand labor that the freight charges of the lakes are the wonder of the whole commercial world. Of some kinds of freight the cost of transporting a ton from Buffalo to Duluth is only eighty-five cents. The railroads have given up the attempt to compete and have bought up instead the lines of steamers with which they make connection. The recent tendency on the lakes is to consolidation of ownership. To-day the Pittsburg Steamship Company owns a fleet of one hundred and eight vessels, whose total length if put in one long line would be over eight miles. These fleets are many times the size of those owned by Americans on the ocean. Indeed, this is one of the striking contrasts between lake and ocean traffic. A very large proportion of lake vessels is owned by Americans, while the reverse is true on the ocean.