Sell the Bonds, Build the Furnaces: Seattle's Steel Gamble

The Seattle Iron and Steel Company has been organized to meet the demand of the Pacific Coast for iron and steel manufactured upon the Pacific Coast from Pacific Coast raw materials, by skilled workmen employed by Pacific Coast capital, under the management and direction of Pacific Coast men. It is the purpose of this company to establish many big manufacturing plants and thousands of well paid workmen in the city of Seattle.

Nothing will increase the home market of the farmers, fruit growers, dairy and cattlemen of the Pacific Northwest as quickly and as permanently as the establishment of the iron and steel manufacturing business on the Pacific Coast. Big payrolls invariably follow the iron and steel business, and big payrolls insure profitable home markets. More than 700,000 tons of iron and steel are now consumed on the Pacific Coast, and more than $25,000,000 annually leave the Pacific Coast for Eastern, Southern and foreign manufacturers.

RAW MATERIALS. The company has acquired all of the properties of the Pacific Steel Company at Irondale, Washington — its complete blast furnace and charcoal plants, wharves, bunkers, sawmill, laboratory, dwelling and boarding houses, 300 acres of land — together with the records of experiments made at the Irondale furnace in the use of the ores and cokes of the Pacific Coast, and all the information obtained in that company's work of using native raw materials in the manufacture of high-grade pig iron. It has purchased the Sarita Iron Mine on Barclay Sound, a magnificent property with an enormous tonnage of high-grade ore already in sight, and the iron mine on Texada Island, consisting of 2,431 acres and a practically inexhaustible supply of high-grade ore. It holds options on the developed mines at Sechart and Copper Island, and has favorable arrangements for supplies of coke and limestone in as large quantities as may be required.

THE PLANS. The company will immediately remodel and enlarge its blast furnace at Irondale, increasing its capacity to 50 tons of charcoal pig iron per day; the eighteen carloads of material for the work are now on the ground, and the furnace is expected back in blast within ninety days. There is an enormous demand for this high-grade iron, which can be marketed at a minimum profit of $8.00 per ton. The new open-hearth steel plant and rolling mills, each with a capacity of 50 tons per day, and a new 200-ton per day blast furnace, will be erected upon the splendid site secured on the water front at West Seattle. A new modern 12-inch rolling mill, consisting of five stands of three-high rolls, with a 20x36x30 new Tod tandem compound engine — the best and most modern that money can buy — has arrived in Seattle and is now at the Oriental Warehouse.

FINANCIAL PLANS. The company invites the people of Seattle, and of the entire Pacific Coast, to become investors in its securities, to the end that the money necessary to establish this great and profitable business may be furnished by Pacific Coast people, and that the large profits may go to the pockets of Pacific Coast investors and remain on this coast. Funds will be raised by the sale of First Mortgage 20-Year 6 Per Cent Gold Bonds, issued in denominations of $100 and $500, so that the man of moderate means as well as the capitalist may have an opportunity of participating. The company will not sell any of its stock, but will give 100 per centum of its stock as a bonus with every bond purchased. Bonds are sold at 95 per centum of their face value and are now on sale at the Puget Sound National Bank, the First National Bank, the Washington National Bank, the National Bank of Commerce, Dexter Horton & Co., the Scandinavian-American Bank, the Seattle National Bank, the Washington Trust Co. and other houses, or at the company's offices, 634-635 Lumber Exchange, Seattle.

The prospectus is headed by a letter from Andrew Carnegie, dated Edinburgh, October 22, 1902: "The seat of manufacturing power is now, and will continue to be, more and more simply a question of where the raw materials are found under suitable conditions. Capital and skilled labor have lost the power they once had to attract raw materials; these now attract labor and capital."

OFFICERS: Homer H. Swaney, president; James A. Moore, vice-president; M. J. Carrigan, secretary; James D. Hoge, Jr., treasurer; William Pigott, general manager. Among the trustees: Jacob Furth of the Puget Sound National Bank, J. W. Clise of the Chamber of Commerce, C. D. and P. S. Stimson of the Stimson Mill Co., Robert Moran of Moran Bros. Co., Maurice McMicken of the First National Bank, C. L. Denny of the Denny-Blaine Co., A. J. Blethen of the Daily Times, A. Hemrich of the Seattle Brewing & Malting Co., A. S. Kerry, J. M. Frink, E. M. Wilson and Sherwood Gillespy.