That the Corporation would eventually make some arrangement to secure control of the mining rights on the Hill ore properties had long been believed in the steel trade. It was pointed out by trade authorities that the big company did not have ore reserves commensurate with its immense output, and the obvious conclusion was that it would not fail to secure such reserves sooner or later. The vast properties in the Mesaba Range owned by the railroad dominated by James J. Hill constituted, it was claimed, the only commercially valuable supply of importance which had not yet been appropriated by one steel company or another, so the natural conclusion was that the Corporation must eventually attach to itself these supplies of ore. Negotiations leading up to the lease went on for several years before the matter was finally brought to a head in December, 1906. The lease, which was probably the most voluminous document of its kind ever written, gave the Corporation the right to mine the Hill ores until exhaustion, or, at the Corporation’s option, until January 1, 1915, the exercise of this option being contingent upon a two-year notice to be given before that date. The Corporation positively declined to enter into the lease unless it contained provision for cancellation, and it later exercised this right, the directors at the close of 1912 serving notice of their intention to abandon the lease in two years. Comprised in the Great Northern ore land were some of the richest and best iron deposits in the country. Of a total area of more than 65,000 acres owned or leased by the Hill interests, 39,296 acres with an estimated ore content of something like half a billion tons were included in the lease to the Great Western Mining Co., a Steel Corporation subsidiary and the nominal lessee. The volume of ore to be mined and the royalties to be paid were arranged on an ascending scale. In 1907 the Western company was to take out 750,000 tons of ore and this tonnage was to be increased by as much again every year the lease continued up to 1917, when the tonnage to be mined was fixed at 8,250,000 tons, at which figure it was to remain thenceforward until the contract expired by reason of ore exhaustion. Royalties on the ore mined were based on a price of eighty-five cents per ton of dried ore with a metallic content of 59 per cent. for the first year of the lease, this base price being increased by 3.4 cents a ton each year--i.e., to 88.4 cents in 1908, 91.8 cents in 1909, etc. To this royalty was to be added transportation charges of 80 cents a ton to the docks at Superior, Wis., the contract providing that all the ore was to be shipped via the Great Northern Railway. For each variation of 1 per cent. above or below the 59 per cent. metallic content, it was further stipulated, the base price was to be increased or diminished by 4.82 cents a ton.