Word: silver
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Dates: during 1970-1979
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Reserve Mining, which is owned jointly by Armco Steel and Republic Steel, produces 15% of the U.S.'s iron ore. It mines taconite around Babbitt, Minn., then ships the flintlike rock 50 miles to Silver Bay, on the shores of Lake Superior. There the iron content of the taconite is extracted, and the wastes, or "tailings," are dumped into the water. Any time that Reserve is attacked for polluting the lake-and the attacks have been continuous since 1967-it says that it might have to close the plant if ordered to stop. That would wreak economic havoc, since...
...scientists pinpoint Reserve's taconite tailings as the source of the asbestos. Company experts say that the material leaches naturally out of surrounding rock formations. Either way, the minute fibers are dangerous. If ingested or inhaled-and particles have been detected in the air over Reserve's Silver Bay plant-asbestos can cause cancer...
...ideal solution would be for Reserve Mining to dispose of its wastes on land. But company officials testified that Reserve had no plan for land disposal, and would need time to prepare one. The executives also rejected a Government proposal that Reserve move its entire Silver Bay operation to Babbitt. Such a move would cost $ 187 million, said federal officials. Reserve promptly upped the estimate to $575 million, a figure that Judge Lord scrutinized and then branded as "blatantly inflated." On March 1, an Armco executive admitted that Reserve Mining had in fact prepared four or five on-land disposal...
...suppose I could talk about quests and crones and wish-fulfillment and why little girls love their dogs. A couple of years ago, someone came up with a much better explanation--The Wizard of Oz, he proved, was actually the best musical to come out of the Free Silver movement of the late nineteenth century...
Frank Baum was a populist who tried to get his views across in many less oblique media than children's stories but failed until he wrote Oz. Adaptations usually make changes that obscure his intentions--Dorothy's slippers were silver, not ruby, in the book. The Cowardly Lion is William Jennings Bryan, who never went far enough, for Baum, towards removing the farmer from his "cross of gold." The Wicked Witch of the West, then as now, is the Republican party. And the Wizard of Oz is none other than Grover Cleveland, who promised free silver and then told...