Gold mining claim

“ 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. ”

“ That for many years, however, gold will outrun trade seems probable, for the reason that there is no immediate prospect of a reduction in the percentage growth of the gold stock, nor of an increase in the percentage growth of trade. Not only do mining engineers report untold workable deposits in outlying regions (for instance a full billion of dollars in one region of Colombia alone) , but any long look ahead must reckon with possible and probable cheapening of gold extraction. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ An important factor in the progress of gold mining has been the increased respect for the industry on the part of the public at large. Not many years ago, many people, especially in the east, looked on gold mining as a gamble and a calling of questionable character; and the numerous fraudulent schemes that had been floated gave them some justification for their ideas. Many a person who sought to increase his fortune by mining, kept the matter a secret, so as not to injure his standing with his more conservative business associates. ”

“ The remaining countries of the world are of little importance as gold producers; hence a discussion of the commercial control of their mines would be of little value. In most of them the mining properties are owned and operated by domestic capital, the former Empire of Austria-Hungary being one exception to this general statement. Prior to the war, British capital controlled gold mines in Transylvania.
The ownership of smelters and reduction plants has little influence upon the commercial control of the gold industry. ”

“ In very deep mines, where the heat becomes unbearable after a few minutes unless a strong wind be kept going underground, the forward and backward courses for traffic and ventilation together are specially advantageous.
Prices during the twentieth century will depend more definitely upon the cost of gold-mining than they have ever done at any former time in the world's history. In spite of all the opposition which fanaticism and ignorance could offer to the natural trend of events in the commercial and financial life of the world, the gold standard now rests on an impregnable base ”

“ We mention not the gold washings that are being worked so successfully at present, for as respects their duration and the developement of the industry of the country, they scarcely deserve the attention of the economist be they ever so rich; as all other mines are more beneficent in their influence to the progress of a country than gold mines. These will become the means of advancing the prosperity of the country only when a regular system of mining by sinking shafts into the rocks shall commence, which it is to be hoped will be done ere long. ”

“ Quartz mining is yet in its rudest form. The gold is buried in solid rock, and requires heavy crushing-mills and cumbrous machinery, which must be built and transported at immense expense by capitalists. It is a question with such capitalists how certain is the promise of returns. The uncertainty of mining, as shown by the results of ventures in Colorado, has naturally deterred them. Under the old process of crushing the quartz to powder by stamps, and then separating the gold by amalgamation with quicksilver, but twenty-five per cent of the gold is saved. ”

“ Gold-mining in the Rand fashion is a costly business, and altogether beyond the reach of the small man: claims were bought up by the financiers who were first in possession, and, since they were able to hold and develop, the entry of other financial houses has been blocked. But the great mining firms do not confine their activity to gold. They own millions of acres of land throughout the country, and many valuable building sites in the towns. ”

“ It is safe to accept the conclusion which every intelligent person in Australia, New Zealand, and California has arrived at; namely, that the cost of getting gold out of the earth is as much as its intrinsic value. To put it in other words: in the long run, the average laborer, working at any other calling for three dollars or even less per day, will realize more money in a twelvemonth than the average gold-miner in the same period. Nevertheless, gold-mining seems to be the active agent which Providence has employed to people the waste places of the earth. ”

“ In one place it is in vain to look for it except on the top of a hill; in another, the valley alone will yield gold; and not a few geologists and so-called mining experts who have visited the gold-fields lately, for the purpose of reporting on properties for intending purchasers, have been much at fault regarding the possibility of finding payable gold, and confessed that it is necessary to spend a considerable time before a property can be even cursorily examined. ”

“ There would be no destruction of wealth more than there would be in throwing so many small pieces of paper away, and even less, for the "proper cost" of gold as a medium of exchange is absolutely nothing; the ownership only of it would be transferred to all other owners of money in the world. This would be therefore giving the wealth principally to the rich, and it would, by increasing the exchange value of gold, be an incentive to further gold mining, a most wasteful expenditure of labour ”

“ Companies of men who have large amounts of money invested in mining of a variety of sorts, such as ‘tunnelling,’ ‘sluicing,’ and ‘quartz crushing,’ on a large scale, are not going to abandon well-developed properties which produce profitable returns. We have no fear of having to suffer any inconvenience from a scarcity of gold in California in consequence of the removal from the country of so many miners. ”

“ It has been said that the gold produced in the mining districts of the United States has cost far more in labor and physical loss than its value amounted to. The cost of the farm-land in the United States leaves the apparent waste on gold{278} in absolute insignificance. There are thousands of American farms to-day, probably hundreds of thousands, of which the land under the hammer would not bring as much money as the fences of those same farms have cost. ”

“ 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. ”

“ A “face” is formed in the drift, and the water played against the lower portion of the ledge, which is quickly undermined, falls, and is soon washed away in the stream of water, which is conducted through sluices with riffles, and sometimes over considerable lengths of amalgamated copper plates. This class of mining has been most extensively carried out in California and New Zealand, and some districts of Victoria, but the truly enormous drifts of the Shoalhaven district in New South Wales must in the near future add largely to the world’s gold supply. ”

“ Nothing but such equality would have been tolerated by the miners, who were emphatically the law-makers, as respects mining, upon the public lands in the State. The first appropriator was everywhere held to have, within certain well-defined limits, a better right than others to the claims taken up; and in all controversies, except as against the government, he was regarded as the original owner, from whom title was to be traced. But the mines could not be worked without water. Without water the gold would remain for ever buried in the earth or rock. ”

“ That millions of dollars worth of gold have been taken from the mines, and that there is a vast amount still remaining, no one pretends to deny; but then it does not exist in the quantity that is generally supposed. There is nothing more uncertain, as a business, than gold mining in California. It is, indeed, like a lottery—more blanks than prizes; and as every man has to take his chances, he must not feel too much disappointed if his luck leaves him with the majority. A few make themselves independently rich, and go home with flying colors ”

“ But mining now is as different from the mining of the ancients or of the middle ages as a locomotive engine is from an ox-waggon, such are the resources which chemical and mechanical science place at our disposal. Accordingly, the payable parts of the quartz reefs will have been drained of their gold in a few years, or, at any rate, in a few decades, just as many of the silver lodes of Nevada have already been worked out and abandoned. There will then be no further cause for the existence of the mine-workers at those points, and the population will decline just as that of Nevada has declined. ”

“ Gold mines are numerous in many parts of the country, and most of these are owned by English capitalists. The aggregate yield of gold is only $6,000,000 annually. There are also silver, copper, and lead; and lately quicksilver has been discovered. Very unwisely, the government exacts a heavy tax on all mining machines brought into the country. ”

“ Quartz-mining and milling require capital, and staying-power, and patience. Big companies were formed, and for several decades, now, the lodes have been successfully worked, and have yielded great wealth. Since the gold discovery in 1853 the Ballarat mines—taking the three kinds of mining together—have contributed to the world’s pocket something over three hundred millions of dollars, which is to say that this nearly invisible little spot on the earth’s surface has yielded about one-fourth as much gold in forty-four years as all California has yielded in forty-seven. ”

“ That kind of gold-seeking, however, which unsettles the habits of a population, and represses the other pursuits of industry, is not likely to endure very long in any country. It must give way in time to scientific mining, which is as legitimate a business as any other, and which, by the wealth it circulates, will tempt men into new avenues of industry, and recruit, to any extent that may be desirable, the supply of labour. ”

“ The dynamite and railway monopolies, the heavy expense of the transit of machinery from the coast, the absence of subsidiary local industries to feed the gold industry, forced the work into the hands of a small circle of rich firms who could provide the large capital and face the heavy risks of a new enterprise. It is clear, therefore, that mining on the Rand, while a notable enterprise, has necessarily been a slow one, since the two natural factors, the amount of gold in the soil and the labour of working it, have been complicated by many artificial hindrances. ”

“ The holder of a miner’s right is entitled to enter upon any Crown land for the purpose of prospecting and searching for gold, and to take and maintain possession of a parcel or parcels of land and work the same, subject to the regulations and provisions of the Act; he is also authorised to cut timber for removal or for the erection of a place of residence or of business, and with the Warden’s consent, to make tramways or roads for mining purposes. Claims are of four kinds—alluvial deposits and river or creek beds; quartz lodes, reefs, and leaders ”

“ Again, while there can never be a trust in gold, the market being unlimited and beyond any possibility of control, gold-mining must remain the chief interest for any group of firms who desired to establish a trust in other commodities. Now gold-mining is one-third an industry and two-thirds a scientific inquiry. An ordinary trust is concerned less with production than with the control of the markets and the methods of distribution. But all progress in Rand mining depends on nice and speculative scientific calculation. ”

“ The pay-dirt is usually covered by layers of barren dirt, which is sometimes washed, and sometimes left undisturbed, while the pay-dirt is taken out from beneath it through tunnels or shafts. So far as our present information goes, we have reason to believe that no gold country ever possessed so large an extent of paying placer mines, with the pay-dirt so near the surface, and with so many facilities for working them as California. In Australia the diggings are very deep and spotted, that is, the gold is unevenly distributed, and the supply of water for mining is scanty. ”