ABSTRACT
The basis of all supremacy in the iron trade is adequate supplies of cheap raw material. That material consists of iron ores on the one hand and of coal and coke on the other. The greatest known reserves of ore of a high class, cheaply mined and readily smelted, are those of the Lake Superior region, in the United States. The differences in the cost of extracting iron ores are not so much due to wages as to physical conditions and methods of working. The ore supplies of the future are a matter of much concern to the British iron trade. In Great Britain itself there is not much likelihood of new fields of any importance being discovered. The great bulk of the pig iron produced in Great Britain is made with coke fuel, but raw coal is used in Scotland and in some parts of the Midlands, including North Staffordshire, Notts, and Leicester.
