rket. A similar project in Chile, which lay dormant during the war
because of restricted shipping facilities, is expected in the near
future to yield important shipments to the United States. In none of
these cases will production be limited in the near future by ore
reserves. Increased production and use of iron ores are also to be
looked for in Newfoundland, North Africa, China, India, Australia, and
South Africa.

On the 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 mark