The destructive necessity: Revisiting the perpetual conflict of mining

“ They contend that, inasmuch as Nature has concealed metals far within the depths of the earth, and because they are not necessary to human life, they are therefore despised and repudiated by the noblest, and should not be mined, and seeing that when brought to light they have always proved the cause of very great evils, it follows that mining is not useful to mankind, but on the contrary harmful and destructive. ”

“ Thus it is said, it is clear to all that there is greater detriment from mining than the value of the metals which the mining produces.
So in fierce contention they clamour, showing by such examples as follow that every great man has been content with virtue, and despised metals. They praise Bias because he esteemed the metals merely as fortune’s playthings, not as his real wealth. ”

“ They would dig out caves in which to lie down at night, and by day they would rove in the woods and plains at random like beasts, and inasmuch as this condition is utterly unworthy of humanity, with its splendid and glorious natural endowment, will anyone be so foolish or obstinate as not to allow that metals are necessary for food and clothing and that they tend to preserve life?
Moreover, as the miners dig almost exclusively in mountains otherwise unproductive, and in valleys invested in gloom, they do either slight damage to the fields or none at all. ”

“ Mineral resources, on the other hand, are non-renewable. Their exploitation is not dependent upon the viability of ecosystems, the degradation of which has little, if any, impact upon their supply. In fact in modern times the commercial exploitation of minerals has shown scant respect for the viability of ecosystems because the short-term maximisation of returns on capital does not take into account the cost of the ecological damage caused by mining. ”

“ It must be remembered that mining, though often so profitable, is nevertheless a destructive industry, thus differing from agriculture, which is productive, and manufactures, which are constructive. Every ton of stone broken and treated from even the best gold mine in the world makes that mine the poorer by one ton of valuable material; thus, to buy a mining property on its past reputation for productiveness is, as a rule, questionable policy, unless you know there is sufficient good ore in sight to cover the purchase cost and leave a profit. ”

“ The mining interest respects no rights but its own. A farmer may have his whole estate changed to a barren waste, by a flood of sand and gravel from some hydraulic mining up the stream. If a fine orchard or garden stands in the way of the working of a rich gulch or bank, orchard and garden are doomed. They are torn down, dug out, washed to pieces, and then washed over side hills. Where the process of hydraulic mining has been, or is being carried on, the country presents an appearance of devastation and ruin that is scarcely imaginable; forming a frightful blot upon the face of nature. ”

“ The mining of copper with profit depends on the price of the metal in the market and on the cost of extracting and transporting the ore to the smelter. This, of course, is true with all metals, hence it frequently happens that mines containing abundant ore are not worked, owing to the fact that the cost of production, when taken into consideration with the market price, eliminates the possibility of profit. ”

“ Under the mining laws Congress has made public lands available to people for the purpose of mining valuable mineral deposits and not for other purposes. [4] The obvious intent was to reward and encourage the discovery of minerals that are valuable in an economic sense. Minerals which no prudent man will extract because there is no demand for them at a price higher than the costs of extraction and transportation are hardly economically valuable. ”

“ The enormous importation of gold and silver from the new world soon made up the deficiencies of the old mining regions, and, reducing the value of the metals in comparison with other products, caused mines which had before been successfully worked to be abandoned as unprofitable. ”

“ The price of gold, which is itself the standard of value, could not rise to offset growing mining costs and to maintain profits, as was the case with iron, copper, and the other metals,—with the result that the margin of profit in gold mining became so small as materially to affect exploration and production. Another important cause of decreased production was the actual exhaustion of certain mines, and the lowering of the grades of ore available in many others. ”

“ In earlier times it has been a common proceeding on the part of governments to restrict or stimulate both mining for the precious metals and the business of coining. At all times the working of gold and silver mines has been rather a hazardous speculation than a legitimate business. “When any person undertakes to work a new mine in Peru,” says Adam Smith, “he is universally looked upon as a man destined to bankruptcy and ruin, and is upon that account shunned and avoided by everybody. ”

“ Those who think mining of no advantage to the men who follow the occupation assert, first, that scarcely one in a hundred who dig metals or other such things derive profit therefrom; and again, that miners, because they entrust their certain and well-established wealth to dubious and slippery fortune, generally deceive themselves, and as a result, impoverished by expenses and losses, in the end spend the most bitter and most miserable of lives. But persons who hold these views do not perceive how much a learned and experienced miner differs from one ignorant and unskilled in the art. ”

“ From the above and other evidence in the record it is certain that before the La Abra Company ceased to work the mining property it had become utterly bankrupt, and that its abandonment of all operations at the mines was due to its inability from want of funds to carry them on, and to the belief, founded upon the experience of two years and more, that the mines, if not entirely worthless, were not of sufficient value to justify its owners in proceeding further in their development. ”

“ Of a hundred prospectors, ninety-nine die poor. The failures must be charged off to industrial waste attendant upon inherent conditions of the mining industry.
Again, in the development of a mine after it is located and proved in part, there is more unavoidable economic waste. The rock is blank and silent. It can only be explored by means of expensive drifts and drillings. In one mine at Bisbee, Arizona, a shaft was sunk which had drifts at the 600-and 900-feet levels, all without result. ”

“ EDITOR'S NOTE.—It is time vigorous efforts were made to stop the cruel frauds perpetrated on the name of one of the world's greatest industries. Mining is a legitimate and honorable enterprise. It contributes immensely to the national wealth. It has been the source of some of our great fortunes. Because there is something magical in the suggestion of gold or coal or copper taken out of the ground, sharpers have made mining an instrument of successful deception. They have tricked people into investing their savings in worthless or even non-existent mines. ”

“ THE PUBLIC = THE MINE Instances of actual Nipissing rises caught in time by the lamb are very rare. I rom first to last, the PUBLIC is the mine, AND THE RETURNS COME OUT OF THE SAVINGS BANKS. In some mines "high grading"—the carrying away of valuable pieces of ore by the miners themselves—is fought as sternly as the diamond stealing by the Kaffirs in a Kimberley mine. In yet other mines, far more numerous, high grading is encouraged among the miners. The report gets out that the ore is so rich that the miners steal it in their dinner pails. That booms the stock. ”

“ Good, worthy mining property does not need to be hawked, usually. There have been periods of financial unrest when it has seemed quite impossible for honest men to dispose of interests in [188] what were unquestionably reliable mining enterprises. At such times, there has been nothing to gain by any amount of teasing the public, and any attempts at forceful disposal of interests in the concerns have but served to kill any small remnants of confidence that the public may have possessed. ”

“ It may be taken as a safe axiom that to make gold-mining in the mine as distinct from mining on the Stock Exchange really profitable the same system of economy, of practical supervision, and scientific knowledge which is now adopted in all other businesses must be applied to the raising and extraction of the metal. Then, and not till then, will genuine mining take the place to which it is entitled amongst our industries. ”

“ In really successful mining it is in the last degree important that the mode of extraction of metals in the most scientific manner should be thoroughly understood, but as a general rule the science of metallurgy is but very superficially grasped even by those whose special business it is to treat ore bodies in order to extract their metalliferous contents, and whether in quartz crushing mill, lixiviating, or smelting works there is much left to be desired in the method of treating our ores. ”

“ There is no system, and the treatment of ores is of necessity handed over to the tender mercies of men who have not even an idea of what an intricate science metallurgy has become in older countries. During many years of practical experience I have never known a single instance where a lode, on being worked, gave a return according to assay, and I have never known any mine where some of the precious metals could not be found in the tailings or slag. ”

“ Probably more mines have been ruined by bad mill management than by bad mining, though every experienced man must have seen in his time many most flagrant instances of bungling in the latter respect. Shafts are often sunk on the wrong side of the lode or too near or too far away therefrom, while instances have not been wanting where the (mis) manager has, after sinking his shaft, driven in the opposite direction to that where the lode should be found. ”

“ This chapter will be devoted to Company formation and working, in which mistakes leading to very serious consequences daily occur.
It is not necessary to go deeply into the question why, in the mining industry more than any other, it should be deemed desirable as a general rule to carry on operations by means of public Companies, but, as a matter of fact, few names can be mentioned of men who mine extensively single handed. Yet, risky as it is, mining is hardly more so than, say, pastoral pursuits, in which private individuals risk, and often lose or make, enormous sums of money. ”

“ Many branches of mining and those which yield the largest returns, can be carried on only by deep excavations in the earth, and the use of powerful machinery, requiring expenditures generally far beyond the means of single individuals. In lode mining, especially, such excavations extend, in most cases, hundreds of feet, in many cases thousands of feet, into the earth, where, for successful working, the steam-engine of great power is as essential an instrument as the pick and the shovel. ”

“ One of the greatest causes of non-success of gold-mining ventures, particularly when worked by public companies, is the lack of actual personal supervision, and hence, among other troubles, is that ultra-objectionable one—gold stealing from the mills, or, in alluvial mining, from the tail races. ”

“ No one can appreciate the magnitude of those various movements by a simple perusal of statistics of the mineral wealth which they disclosed. He must pass through the mining belts and note how almost every rod of ground, over vast tracts of country, is filled with prospect holes that attest the miner’s former presence. If the trapper carried the tools of his trade to haunts remote and inaccessible, the miner, with his pick and shovel, certainly outdid him. ”

“ But then, again, it is becoming plain to many experts in mining that, in working downwards from the surface itself, the future of their industry offers a wide field for the extension of the open-cut system. In proportion as power becomes cheaper, the expense attendant upon the removal of clay, sand, and rock for the purpose of laying bare the cap of a lode at a moderate depth becomes less formidable when balanced against the economy introduced by methods which admit of the miner working in the open air, although at the bottom of a kind of deep quarry. ”

“ Since the formation of the country by Lugard in 1914, Nigeria has had governments that have been careless of the environmental impacts of mining. Tin mining in the Jos Plateau and coal mining in the area around Enugu are good examples of where mining has always ignored the well-being of employees and local people alike. ”

“ Mining is cruel work. Men are down in utter darkness hours on end. They have no life in the sun. They come up from the silence of the earth utterly wearied. Sleep and work, work and sleep. No time or strength for education, no money for books. No leisure for thought.
With the primitive tools of pick and shovel they gut out the insides of the old earth. Their shoulders are stooped from bending. Their eyes are narrowed to the tiny crevises through which they crawl. Evolution, development, is turned backward. Miners become less erect, less wide-eyed. ”

“ They were conducted at sunrise from prison by a subterranean passage into the mine, and compelled to toil on until the evening, when they were led back again to their dungeons. In a few years the greater number died, through inhaling the poisonous vapours of the mercury. Reduced to despair, a century and a-half ago, they set fire to the galleries, which, being then constructed of wood, were destroyed, and mining operations put a stop to for many years. Only free labourers are now employed, who are not allowed to work longer than six hours a-day. ”

“ They were likewise doomed to labor on the public works, as well as to cultivate the soil for the general benefit of the country, whilst by the imposition of the mita they were forced to toil in the mines under a rigorous and debasing system which the world believed altogether unequalled in mineral districts until the British parliamentary reports of a few years past disclosed the fact, that even in England, men and women are sometimes degraded into beasts of burden in the mines whose galleries traverse in every direction the bowels of that proud kingdom. ”

“ Often, after a company has spent an immense deal of time and money in sinking a shaft, the water from the springs (the greatest obstacle which the miner has to contend with in this vicinity) rushes in so fast that it is impossible to work in them, or to contrive any machinery to keep it out, and for that reason, only, men have been compelled to abandon places where they were at the very time taking out hundreds of dollars a day. ”

“ In all mining operations, conducted as they are in [Pg 155] modern times, and in our own country, we must either go without the article produced, whether coal, or iron, or lead, or copper, if the machines were abolished,—or we must employ human labour, in works the most painful, at a price which would not only render existence unbearable, but destroy it altogether. The people, in that case, would be in the condition of the unhappy natives of South America, when the Spaniards resolved to get gold at any cost of human suffering. ”

“ There is one thought that will always comfort any person who is engaged in furthering legitimate mining: Wealth [35] acquired from a mine is not wrested from any being but Mother Earth, and it is not, therefore, in the class with the much discussed "tainted money" that is said to be wrung from unfortunate human beings. ”

“ It is to the public interest that deposits of mineral should not be permitted to remain idle and undeveloped. This has been recognized from the earliest times, and laws have been framed in all countries for the encouragement of mining enterprise. In many cases the state or the ruler has sought to obtain a share in the profits of mining, or even to work mines for the individual profit of the ruler or of the state. ”

“ The present mode of promiscuous digging on the surface would then be abandoned, and people made to see and to realize the advantages of the only system of mining which can be permanently, uniformly, and successfully pursued, viz., by penetrating into the bowels of the earth. ”

“ Poor ores are now worked profitably which used to be neglected by the miners; and, as these ores occur in almost inexhaustible masses, their mining is a much less speculative affair than the old system of mining for rich veins. Moreover, the men are, in some of the largest mines, paid by the day, so that their life has become more regular. In many places, however, the work is still done on shares by the miners, who pass their lives in alternations of excessive riches and all kinds of extravagance, succeeded by times of extreme poverty. ”

“ Because rich ore generally peters out fast. The rich mines always catch the suckers easily, and they're the ones who lose. A few cents a ton profit on an immense deposit of low-grade ore means a sure return, because, as a rule, such ore comes from a very old geological formation where the gold is evenly scattered, and labor-saving [Pg 236] machinery can be put in with a certainty that those few cents of profit will continue indefinitely. ”

“ These deposits are naturally the first to fail in productiveness, but the neighboring hills are formed of a gold-bearing quartz which is being crushed, night and day, by hundreds of powerful machines; and the works still pay ten thousand miners fair day-wages, besides giving the organized companies who employ them satisfactory dividends. Thus mining has been largely robbed of its adventurous character in this neighborhood, and perhaps also of most of its alluring charm, having become a sort of regular industry, like coal-mining, or even brick-making. ”

“ The best opinion of mining men in this country is that our mineral resources have not yet been "skimmed" and that the mining ground of the Western country has not yet been well "scratched."
Therefore, the statement made in a newspaper which is supposedly devoted to the interests of investors, that it need not be expected that more copper mines are going to be discovered, is a snare calculated to trap the unwary. ”

“ But, it is not necessary to restrict our thoughts to the old mining regions, for if we can observe how easy it has been to overlook valuable deposits in a country that has been subjected to severe mining work, for years and years, what must we conclude concerning the possibilities of the many and vast undeveloped areas in remote portions of the globe? ”

“ Many gold mines have been abandoned as unprofitable that could have been mined at a profit had their owners been wealthy and enterprising enough to do a great deal of expensive prospecting by diamond drill, cross cuts, drifts and rises. In one instance that came to the writer's knowledge a clever mining engineer cleared nearly $200,000 profit by leasing for a term of years a gold mine that was supposed to be exhausted. A drill hole sunk less than 50 feet below the old workings revealed a pocket of ore in the vein, and paying quartz was found for many hundred feet below. ”

“ In this search there seem to be no certain limits, either to the possible success, or to the possible disappointment of human industry. In the course of a century or two, it is possible that new mines may be discovered, more fertile than any that have ever yet been known; and it is just equally possible, that the most fertile mine then known may be more barren than any that was wrought before the discovery of the mines of America. ”

“ It is true that much fraud has been prevented in the practice of taking up Government lands and it is also quite true that the Forest Service is endeavoring to uplift the mining industry in the western portions of the United States.
Mining is bound to become a still stronger factor in civilization as metallurgical processes multiply and there are discovered means of more economically extracting the valuable contents of ores. ”

“ I have thus answered each argument which critics are wont to put before me when they assert that mining is an undesirable occupation, because it involves expense with uncertainty of return, because it is changeable, and because it is dangerous to those engaged in it.
Now I come to those critics who say that mining is not useful to the rest of mankind because forsooth, gems, metals, and other mineral products are worthless in themselves. ”

“ Hence the almost hysterical concentration of interest on the one great industry. Men who in other matters are remarkable for their breadth of view, are to be found declaring that everything must be made subordinate to mining development,—not in the sense in which the saying is true, that the prosperity of the country depends in the first instance on the mines, but in the quite indefensible sense that any consideration of other things, even when there is no conflict between them and the mining interest, is a misapplication of energy which should go to the greater problem. ”