But to return to Buffalo. The city's location naturally made it one of the great centers of the country. Only the Niagara River separates the city from the most thickly settled part of Canada, and it is therefore a most convenient meeting place of the two countries. Already Buffalo's trade with Canada amounts to over $50,000,000 a year.
Besides being one of the chief commercial centers of the country, Buffalo is an important manufacturing town. Three things are necessary to success in manufacturing—raw materials, power, and a market where the finished goods can be sold. Buffalo has all of these near at hand. The country round about is singularly rich in natural resources. Forests, fertile farm lands, and rich iron and coal deposits are all within easy reach of the city and supply it with raw material at small cost for transportation.
No city in the world has greater advantages than Buffalo in the matter of power. The Niagara Falls furnish an unlimited supply of electric power, which is a substitute for coal and, for many purposes, more convenient. Buffalo's nearness to the coal fields of Pennsylvania makes the cost of both hard and soft coal low. Natural gas and oil furnish about one fifth of the power now used in the city. Both are found near Buffalo, stored in the pores and cavities of rocks. Holes are bored into the rocks, and the petroleum or rock oil is pumped into huge tanks. The gas is carried by underground pipes to the city, where it is used in heating and lighting thousands of homes and factories.
Lastly, Buffalo does not have to ship its products far to find a market. Within 450 miles of the city live almost 50,000,000 people, and lakes, canals, and railroads offer cheap and rapid transportation to all parts of the country. Thirteen steamship lines and 18 railroads enter the city. There are 2 trunk lines from New England; 5 from New York; 1 from Philadelphia, Baltimore, and Washington; 1 from St. Louis; and 4 from Chicago.
LACKAWANNA IRON AND STEEL COMPANY
The richest iron mines in the world are located south of Lake Superior, but there are no coal deposits in this region, and coal is necessary for the manufacturing of iron and steel. As it was cheaper to ship the ore to the coal than to carry the coal to the ore, there were men who, as early as 1860, saw that iron and steel could be manufactured with profit in Buffalo. Though blast furnaces were built from time to time, the industry did not attract great attention until 1899. In that year the Lackawanna Iron and Steel Company, of Scranton, Pennsylvania, moved to Buffalo and built an immense metal-working plant. This plant is south of the city and extends several miles along the shore of Lake Erie. The company has built a ship canal over half a mile long, which the largest lake vessels can enter. On one side of this canal are hundreds of coke ovens and the storage grounds for coal; on the other side are the ore docks, a row of huge blast furnaces, and the steel works with their numerous mills, foundries, and workshops.
In the coke ovens millions of tons of soft coal are every year turned into coke, which is really coal with certain things removed by heating. This coke is used in melting the iron in the blast furnaces—so called because during the melting strong blasts of air are forced into the furnaces. These furnaces are almost a hundred feet high, are made of iron, and lined with fire brick. Tons of coke, limestone, and iron ore are dropped in from above by machinery, and the intense heat of the burning coke melts the iron, which sinks to the bottom of the furnace while the limestone collects the impurities and forms an upper layer. At the bottom of the furnace there are openings where the fiery-hot liquid runs off into molds, or forms, in which it cools and hardens. The waste matter, called slag, is also drawn off at the bottom. More coke and ore are added from above, and the smelting goes on night and day without interruption until the furnace needs repair. After the iron has been separated from the ore, it is taken to the foundries where it is made into steel rails and many other kinds of iron and steel goods.