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Humphrey flew to Canada to buttonhole Timmins. The land lay in desolate territory some 300 miles north of the Gulf of St. Lawrence, in an area called "Ungava"—Eskimo for "faraway." Said Humphrey to Timmins: "What if you found $100 million worth of gold up there? Would anybody build a railroad to bring it out?" He answered his own question. Hurrying back to the U.S., he got the backing of five big U.S. steel companies, a $200 million loan from insurance companies, and formed a corporation with Timmins' Hollinger Consolidated Gold Mines, Ltd. to bring out the iron ore. ("It's a certainty," says one of Humphrey's admirers, "that nobody else in the U.S. could have raised so much capital so fast for a project in Labrador.")
The project is among the most ambitious feats in the history of private capital. The company operates its own air transport service for personnel and supplies. And it is now in mid-construction on a 358-mile double-track railroad to bring the ore down to dockside in the St. Lawrence Gulf. First ore shipments are due in 1954. Soon afterward, production will rise to about 10 million tons a year, and can be boosted to 30 million.
In terms of business, Ungava may yet be a gold mine. In terms of national security, it offers an invaluable new ore source for the U.S. steel industry, which uses 121 million tons of iron ore a year.
"Do You Want a Highway?" The Ungava project involved Humphrey in one of his rare appearances before a congressional committee, to testify in favor of the St. Lawrence Seaway. He admitted he had once been against the seaway and now favored it. "It's perfectly simple gentlemen," he said. "You've got some material up there that you need down here. The only question is do you want a highway between the points or not?"
Humphrey always regarded "that thrilling thing up in Canada" as his last big accomplishment. Once the Labrador project was rolling, he planned to retire. "I was going to shoot some quail and raise some horses," he says. Then Ike asked him to take Treasury. Humphrey went off to Thomasville for a day to think it over. Convinced that "the spirit of this election is the greatest thing that has happened." he agreed to take the job.
The Basic Problem. Humphrey will find enough work in the Treasury to make him feel at home. He will be top boss of—among others—the Bureau of Internal Revenue, the Secret Service, the Bureau of Narcotics, the Bureau of Engraving & Printing (which printed $9,441,380,000 worth of currency in fiscal 1951), the Bureau of the Mint (a billion pennies alone), the U.S. Coast Guard (35,000 officers & men, 192 cutters, 62 patrol boats and 36 lightships) and the Coast Guard air arm (113 planes). He will preside over a domain of 88,000 people. He will have his own flag, serve as a trustee for some $18 billion in Social Security funds, and as chairman of the National Advisory Council on International Monetary & Financial Problems.