VIEW OF POWER CANAL, SAULT STE. MARIE, MICH.

up, including all the resinous matter, and one ton of ground wood pulp requires about one cord of spruce wood.

Chemical pulp is made by first chipping up the spruce, and in a steel digester, lined with bricks to prevent corrosion of the shell, it is "cooked" by steam and an acid hereafter mentioned. The acid dissolves the resinous matter in the spruce and leaves only the long wood fiber, which is, therefore, much stronger than the fiber produced by grinding the wood, and is, of course, much more costly. One ton of

chemical pulp requires about two cords of spruce wood.

Various grades of paper are made from the medium of the two pulps, by mixing the pulps in various proportions. It is bleached white, and afterward colored, if required.

There are two kinds of chemical pulp made, "sulphite" and "soda" pulp; but most chemical pulp is "sulphite," the small proportion of soda" pulp made being used principally for the well-known glossy surfaced magazine paper.

The chemical pulp made at Sault Ste. Marie is "sulphite." The liquor used to dissolve the resinous matter is calcium sulphite, made from limestone, water, and sulphurous acid. The process here is the same as in other sulphite mills, except that, instead of importing the sulphur, it is obtained by roasting Sudbury nickel ore. The sulphur from the Sudbury ore has heretofore all been wasted.

The resourceful head of all this industry had seen clouds of sulphur floating away from the stacks at the nickel smelters at Sudbury, so he set his experts to work out way of saving the sulphur from the smelter smoke. This was soon pronounced possible, and immediately they began smelting nickel ore.

Then, by an electrical treatment entirely original. they fused nickel and iron into a metal that

made the finest nickel steel, for which they find a ready market.

Well, this thing has gone on,-the actual fast building, developing, and inventing,-until today the Canadian side of the Sault looks like a world's fair, and a walk through it is simply bewildering. There is nearly a square mile of mammoth mills, machine shops, smelters, and factories, and a half-mile of ore docks. These industries, that five years ago employed less than five hundred men have nearly five thousand upon their pay roll to-day, and this does not include men indirectly employed by contractors. Twice as many people draw pay to-day from the big Sault company as lived here when the explorer came and waked the sleeping village. The best generalview photograph obtainable shows not much more than half the building on the Canadian side alone. The new steel plant and the big battery of blast furnaces that stand by the ore docks, the car shops, the veneering plant, the sawmill, and great charcoal ovens, where

everything but the smoke is saved, have all been added since the latest photographs were made.

One is amazed that so much could be accomplished with no revenue coming in, and, again, that it could be accomplished in so short a time. Thousands upon thousands of dollars have been spent upon experiments alone. The sewage system alone cost $100,000 before they could begin to build.

A railway, --the Algoma Central & Hudson

Bay, is building north to Hudson Bay, 480 miles. Eighty miles of the main line have been graded, and 50 miles, laid with 80-lb. steel rails, are in operation, with nearly thirty miles of ter minals at the Sault. A branch line is being built to Michipicoten harbor. At Sudbury the company has 12 miles more in operation, and along this short line they have four copper mines that produce 1,000 tons of ore daily.

Ten miles out the main-line locomotive plunges into the forest, and there is tall timber as far north as the engineers have surveyed. Naturally, there must be a great temptation to seize the best of the timber and look after the little trees later; but the men who direct the work up here seem to count it wicked to waste anything. Every tree in the forest is used,—the spruce, of course, for pulp, the hard wood for furniture and veneering, and the roughest for charcoal. white birch is made into spools.

The

At Goulais, 30 miles from the Sault, are mills manufacturing lumber, lath, and shingles. Another mill at Sault Ste. Marie has a capacity of 125,000 feet per day. At Wilde, 25 miles out, there is a nest of 16 charcoal kilns, at Goulais 20, and at Bellevue 20. These are to supply charcoal for the smelters and steel works.

At the Sault an immense charcoal plant has been constructed which will consume 200 cords of wood a day. At this plant all the by-products, such as acetic acid, will be preserved, rectified, and marketed. These charcoal kilns alone will consume 625 cords of wood a day. Twenty-five acres of land must be cleared daily to supply these furnaces; and, when these people pass over it, it is cleared. To watch them at work reminds one of a harvest scene, so completely do they clear the ground. Here is the stubble, and there the waving grain. Three hundred farms of 25 acres each will thus be opened annually, and 300 families can make a living here growing truck for the market.

Beside the wood consumed by the charcoal kilns, the sawmills must be supplied, and the veneering plant, which will eat up 40,000 feet per day; counting trainmen, teamsters, inspectors, and all help engaged in handling the raw material from the forest, this industry alone will give permanent employment to a thousand men. The company takes a cord of wood out of the forest, and works with it until they spend five dollars; when everything has been saved but the smoke, they sell it for six dollars. This last dollar represents the company's profit; the rest goes to labor.

The Helen mine at Michipicoten is a great mountain of iron. They don't mine it; they simply blast and break it off, and slide it into

the ore docks. A number of experts have guessed as to the amount of ore in sight; but, of course, it is only guesswork.

It would appear that the only thing lacking is coal, but these men say they can make better steel with charcoal; still, they can bring back the coal in their empty ore boats cheaper than anybody else can bring or furnish it to them. They have now a fleet of seventeen steamers, some of them ocean-going, on the lakes, with an aggregate tonnage of 45,000 per trip, and are still building.

The steel plant alone,-including blast fur naces, when completed, will cost $10,000,000, will employ 1,000 men, and consume 2,000 tons of ore daily with a product of 1,000 tons of steel. The two pulp mills will employ 300 men, and make 160 tons of pulp a day.

There are many other enterprises carried along by the company; there is an electric streetrailway system,-to operate on both sides,— connecting the two Saults by means of a ferry system; they have, organized and in operation, an express company.

Not far from the main works a model town has been laid out. Many solid blocks of neat. comfortable cottages have been built and are occupied by the employees of the shops. Some have been turned into temporary schoolhouses. On the principal street a block of stately, twostory frame houses are just being completed: these will be occupied by the office clerks and skilled workmen, who will want to keep up a more pretentious establishment than usual. Hedges have been planted, streets graded, and miles of walks have been put down by the company that seems to overlook nothing.

The management of this vast property is thoroughly systematized. There is a responsible head to each branch or department, and these make up the president's general staff. There is a regular cabinet meeting every two weeks. After a substantial dinner, at which tea and coffee flow like water, they adjourn for business; and it's all business until the business is disposed of. Here the various heads of departments make suggestions which are taken up and discussed. If a project has been under way. some one is expected to report upon the practicability of the scheme. If he pronounces the thing a success, that ends it; but if he reports otherwise, he must explain why to the entire satisfaction of the gentleman at the head of the table. It is a remarkable fact that, so far, whatever they have sought has been found; whatever they have conceived has become a reality. The great secret of this success is that nothing has been done by chance. Everything has beer.

carefully thought out and worked out on practical and scientific principles. It is the inevitable result of research, of intelligent conception, tireless energy and the enthusiastic coöperation of 300 clever men who have been assembled at the Sault to assist in carrying forward to success one of the grandest industrial schemes that has ever been undertaken on this continent.

The interests and industries here are so varied, so well planned,-each working to help the other (the bark of the spruce pole bleaches the pulp), -that, if one should fail utterly, the rest would go on. A dozen Banks of Montreal might be forced to close their doors and abandon a dozen towns in Canada, but it would not be felt at the head office; business would continue at the old stand. And if steel and nickel and iron, and all the hard things that are made here, should fail of a market, they would still have this 150,000 square miles of wilderness to harvest and work up.

More than this: Away to the north, past the highlands that rim the lake region, this Hudson Bay road will tap a great swale that will some day yield wheat, as the Red River valley does; only it will all be "No. 1 hard."

One stream they cross on a bridge 135 feet high; but, just below the bridge, the river takes a sheer drop of 170 feet; so that it will be 305 feet from the rail to the river.

Beyond these rocks and rills, the haunt of the deer, the moose and the caribou, the line will drop gradually to the lower warmer lands, and then on through-they are not quite sure what--to Hudson Bay.

On the Michigan side, the same company that has accomplished so much on the edge of the Canadian wilderness has scooped out a power canal beside which the drain that connects the Mediterranean and the Red seas would look like

an irrigating ditch. It is 30 feet deep, 200 feet wide, and two miles long. Near the mouth it flares, fan-shaped, pouring its waters in under the mammoth power house that is just a little over a quarter of a mile long.

From a wide fore-bay,-flowing at the rate of 108,000,000 cubic feet an hour, this vast flood will sweep through the greatest power house on earth, and turn the turbines; of these there are 320, each having the power of 125 horses. This job has already cost in the neighborhood of $4,000,000, and they have not yet begun building the mill, which, like all their other plants, will be the biggest and best in the world. may be said, despite the fact that millions have been spent on the Michigan side, that work is only begun.

It

On the Canadian side, however, they are getting down to steady work. Street cars are stopping at the corner of the grounds, picking up the tired employees and carrying them home in the twilight. There is an electric automobile at the door of the general office building, and a yacht in the harbor. A magnificent house is being built on the highlands overlooking the Sault; and here, with his parents, his brother who has worked with him, and his sisters,-the young man who has been the ruling genius in all this great industrial development will make his home. From his wide veranda he can watch by day the dark clouds floating from the mills; and by night the glare of the blast furnaces will remind him of the Fourth-of-July of his boyhood home in Bangor, Maine. And at evening,-when the wind holds steady from the south, he can hear the roar of furnaces, the singing of the circular saw, the hum of wheels, and the glad cry of the iron horse coming out of the forest; and this is the grand new song of the Sault.

JA

APAN has astonished the world by her mar velous strides to an acknowledged position among the first powers of the earth. Her de velopment during the last half century is, in some respects, more remarkable than that of the United States. Fifty years ago, when Commo dore Perry rapped somewhat roughly at her gates, she was, in material progress, govern mental administration, and educational develop. ment, little beyond where she stood a thousand years before.

Now her snug little realm is traversed with railways and spotted with mani fold industries, her political system compares favorably with the monarchies of Europe, and her colleges and schools are graduating hosts of young men fitted for every position of responsibility. Her foreign commerce has expanded in thirty years from $30,000,000 to $300,000,000 per annum. This is an increase of 1,000 per cent. per annum, a record unrivaled by any other country in the same time or under similar conditions. Starting with no merchant marine, she now has her cargo and passenger steamers running to all parts of the globe in successful competition with the fleets of the older and richer nations. With no modern war vessels twenty years ago, she now has a navy ranking next to our own in effectiveness. With an army a few decades past that was barbaric in equip. ment, she possesses to-day a trained armed force that, in comparison to her area and population, is second to none.

THE NATURE OF JAPAN'S LEADERSHIP IN THE FAR EAST.

Although she entered upon ambitious responsibilities when she engaged in war with China and threw off the swaddling clothes of youth when she negotiated her new treaties for the abolition of extraterritoriality, she is now preparing to play a part in Asia more ambitious and more pregnant with responsibilities than any she has yet undertaken. Her new rôle may be described as that of the schoolmaster of Asia. other words, recent events would indicate that Japan will be the chief influence to modernize China, to awaken Korea, to help Siam, and even,

In

incongruous though it seems, to cooperate with Russia in making Eastern Siberia habitable and prosperous. The Japanese army officer, lawgiver, merchant, and general utility man seems to possess more all-round capabilities for bringing out what is best in his fellow Asiatic than any other national. The average Japanese understands thoroughly and completely the average Chinese, Korean, Siamese, and miscellaneous Asiatic. where the European and American labors in mystery and ignorance. This is natural. The Japanese people are akin to other Asiatics. are probably of Malay origin and so have racial sympathies with the southern Asiatics. Their written language is the same as that of China and Korea in its higher forms, and hence they have in this a bond of closer union than any possessed by the Caucasian races.

They

They under

stand the Asiatic point of view, and this is a matter of cardinal importance. They look at Europeans and Americans largely through the same glasses as gaze upon the rest of the Asiatic peoples. They are not compelled to reverse their methods of reasoning to appreciate how the Chinese, Koreans and Siamese reach a conclusion. They can teach and lead with a directness and efficiency that is lacking among Europeans. In bringing out these comparisons, I do not mean that the Japanese have not their weaknesses and shortcomings, or that in the compre hensive economy of the world they are in any way superior to the progressive races of Europe and America. They are simply better suited to deal with their own kind, and they have added to that quality immeasurable strength by studying, adopting, and mastering, to a commendable degree, the influences that have done so much to build up the nations and peoples of America and Europe. This argument is not a eulogy of Japan; it is a frank description of what she is preparing to do at this hour. In playing the part of the schoolmaster of Asia she certainly will have the good will of America.

HER EDUCATIONAL FUNCTIONS.

By way of comparison, it might be said that Japan is establishing throughout eastern Asia