commercial horizon are ores of still newer districts, the availability of which may not be read from tables of production. Their availability must be determined by analysis and measurement of the factors entering into availability. Availability of iron ore is determined by percentage of iron, percentages of impurities, percentages of advantageous or deleterious minor constituents, physical texture, conditions for profitable mining, adaptability to present furnace practice, distance from consuming centers, conditions and costs of transportation, geographical and transportational relation to the coal and fluxes necessary for smelting, trade relations, tariffs and taxes, inertia of invested capital, and other considerations. All of these factors are variable. A comparison of ores on the basis of any one of these factors or of any two or three of them is likely to be misleading. A comparison based on the quantitative consideration of all of the several factors seems to be made practically impossible by the difficulty of ascertaining accurately the quantitative range and importance of each factor, and by the difficulty of integrating all of the factors even if they should be determined. However, their combined effect is expressed in the cost of bringing the product to market; and comparison of costs furnishes a means of comparing availability of ores. A high-grade ore, cheaply mined and favorably located with reference to the points of demand, will command a relatively high price at the point of production. The same ore so located that its transportation costs are higher will command a lower price; or it may be so located that the costs of mining and bringing it to places where it can be used are so high that there is no profit in the operation. There are known high-grade iron ores which, because of cost, are not available under present conditions.
The availability of an ore, then, depends on its relation to a market,—whether, after meeting the cost of transportation, it can be sold at prevailing market prices at the consuming centers, and can still leave a fair margin of profit for the mining operation. The price equilibrium between consuming centers affords a reasonably uniform basis against which to measure availability of ores.
Figures of cost are obtainable as a basis for comparison of availability of iron ores of certain of the districts, but not enough are at hand for comparison of the ores of all districts.
Careful study of costs has demonstrated the availability in the near future of the Brazilian high-grade Bessemer hematites; and projects which are now under way for exportation to England and the United States will doubtless make this enormous reserve play an important part in the iron industry.
Iron ore is known but not yet mined in many parts of the western United States and western Canada. With the increasing population along the west coast of North America, projects for smelting the ore there are becoming more definite. Establishment of smelters on the west coast would make available a large reserve of ore (see also, however, p. 155).
The list of changes now under way or highly probable for the future might be largely extended. The use of iron and steel is rapidly spreading through populous parts of the world which have heretofore demanded little of these products. This increased use is favoring the development of local centers of smelting, which will make available other large reserves of iron ore.