Iron Will: Cleveland-Cliffs and the Mining of Iron Ore, 1847-2006

3. Crises, Diversification, and Integration, 1891–1930

O n October 8, 1890, Samuel Livingston Mather died in Cleveland. On the day of his funeral—the 11th—over 500 miles away on the Marquette iron range, “all work of every kind” ceased on Cleveland Iron Mining Company properties “out of respect to his memory.”1 Mather had served as an officer in the company from 1853 and as president from 1869 to 1890. He had become the heart and soul of the corporation, devoting most of his energies from the mid-1850s onward to overseeing the company’s agents and mining superintendents, to chartering vessels, to finding purchasers for its ores, and to directing its expansion. The succession was seamless. His second son, William G. Mather, assumed the helm of first the Cleveland Iron Mining Company and then Cleveland-Cliffs when the holding company was formed to combine Cleveland Iron Mining Company and Iron Cliffs in May 1891. Like his father, William G. Mather would dedicate his life to the company: between them they devoted nearly a century of leadership, giving Cleveland Iron and Cleveland-Cliffs a continuity that set it apart from virtually every other iron ore company in the country. One of William G. Mather’s earliest undertakings was construction of a cottage in Ishpeming, built on a hill overlooking the southeast side of the city near the soon-to-beabandoned Moro mine. Designed by local architects Charlton, Gilbert and Demar of Marquette and landscaped by Warren Manning, a nationally known landscape architect, the cottage became Mather’s headquarters on his very frequent visits to the company’s mining operations. With additions in 1903, the cottage came to be used increasingly for business purposes, including meetings between Mather and local mine mangers and meetings of Cleveland-Cliffs’ board of directors when the board visited the region.2 3 CRISES, DIVERSIFICATION, AND INTEGRATION, 1891–1930 Cliffs Cottage, c. 1900, on the hill in the center background, served as William G. Mather’s headquarters during his visits to the company’s primary mining district. The local mining agent’s residence is the two-story house in the center foreground. (Courtesy of Cliffs Natural Resources, Inc.) Cleveland-Cliffs’ board of directors posed in front of Cliffs Cottage, 1902. Back row, left to right: Peter White, Austin Farrell, William G. Mather, H. R. Harris, and F. A. Morse. Front row, left to right: M. M. Duncan, R. C. Mann, Samuel Redfern, and J. H. Sheadle. (Courtesy of Cliffs Natural Resources, Inc.) 86 CHAPTER 3 In 1891, with the absorption of Iron Cliffs, William Mather and his company had every reason to look forward to a prosperous future. Immediate concerns about ore reserves had been put to rest. The discovery of ore under Lake Angeline and the acquisition of Iron Cliffs had halted and then reversed the declining relative position of the company in the Lake Superior iron ore district (see table below). Table 3-1. Cleveland Iron Mining Co./Cleveland-Cliffs Iron Co. ore shipments, 1870–1910 Year Tons of iron ore shipped by all Lake Superior mines Tons of ore shipped by CIMC/CCI % of Lake Superior shipments by CIMC/CCI 1870 856,000 133,000 15.5 1875 899,000 130,000 14.5 1880 1,965,000 213,000 10.8 1885 2,468,000 219,000 8.9 1890 9,011,000 688,000 7.6 1895 10,441,000 899,000 8.6 1900 19,169,000 1,993,587 10.4 1905 34,575,000 2,539,374 7.3 1910 43,630,000 2,669,491 6.2 Sources: Lake Superior ore shipments are from Lake Superior Iron Ore Association, Lake Superior Iron Ores, 1938 (Cleveland: Lake Superior Iron Ore Association, 1938), 308. For CIMC/CCI shipments, the table uses Cleveland-Cliffs Iron Co., The Cleveland-Cliffs Iron Company: An Historical Review of This Company’s Development and Resources Issued in Commemoration of Its Seventieth Anniversary, 1850–1920 (Cleveland: Cleveland-Cliffs, 1920), 30, which reports shipments “from the Company’s properties.” Note: The post-1890 figures for CCI ore may be a bit high because some of the ore shipped from company properties was owned by partners. Moreover, the figures sometimes do not quite mesh with figures published in company annual reports. Little did Mather and Cleveland-Cliffs realize that they would very shortly need...