This was the starting age of railroads and trains, so by this time, they could easily transport ore by train to other places. The booming use of the railroad system quickly made companies that you are talking about rich, which expanded the railroad system even further. New equipment was being invented to get goods and items to their destination in the shortest amount of time possible. The place you are talking about however, is Lake Superior, where there were an abundance of steel ore, but it was very isolated from everything else, so they profited more off of the railroad system than average.
The great depression, poverty and unemployment was on the rise, the stock market crash. Hitler’s takeover of the German government in 1933 forced many “expatriates” not only to return to the United States but to become politically engaged in their home country.
