In the Hill lease the price which the Steel Corporation was to pay on the ore taken out of the Great Northern holdings in the Mesaba region was based on an iron content of 59 per cent. Northern ore averages well over 50 per cent. metallic content and that yielding much under 50 per cent. is not considered commercially available, although some of the lower grade ore is treated by a concentrating process and made so. Moreover, much of the ore of the Great Lakes region lies in immense bodies within a few feet of the earth’s surface and is mined by the simple process of removing the top layer of soil--technically known as stripping--and then putting a steam shovel to work. But the ore beds from which the Tennessee company draws its raw supplies average well under 40 per cent. in iron, actually from 36 per cent. to 37 per cent.; nor does the ore lie near the surface, and the process of making it into iron and steel is necessarily more tedious and more costly than is the case with the richer and more easily reached northern iron. In the first place, more labor is required, particularly in winning the raw materials, as the coal fields are badly disturbed geologically, making the expense of mining very much higher. And the ore is nearly all hard ore, requiring to be drilled, blasted, and crushed. Further, the low iron content requires the use of about one and three quarter times as much ore per ton of pig iron, and the poor quality of the Alabama ore necessitates the use of about half as much again of coke to make a ton of iron as compared with that coming from the Lake Superior district. The high phosphorous content of southern pig iron prevents the use of the cheaper Bessemer process which is used on the low phosphorous pig iron of the northern district and the fact that no Bessemer steel industry exists in the South to furnish the scrap required in the straight open-hearth process prevents the economical use of this process in the South, a disadvantage which does not exist in the North, where scrap is available. Hence it is advisable in the Birmingham district to use a combination of the two processes, the iron being first bessemerized, then worked through the open-hearth furnace. And this adds greatly to the cost of converting a ton of pig iron into steel.