Mining waste

“ 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. ”

“ We supply forty-five tons out of every hundred of iron ore, twenty-two tons of gold, thirty tons of silver, thirty-three tons of lead, nearly twenty-eight tons of the zinc, about fifty-five tons of the copper, and sixty-three tons of the petroleum consumed by all civilized countries.
This would be a cause for great national pride if we did not need also to consider the shameful fact that our wastes or losses in the mining, handling, and use of our mineral products are estimated at more than $1,500,000 per day, or, for the year, the gigantic sum of $547,500,000. ”

“ There is a great waste created by smelting ore in the common log furnace, in which a considerable part of the lead is volatilized, forming the sublimated matter which adheres in such bodies to the sides of the log furnaces, and is thrown by as useless. This can be prevented by an improvement in its construction. To pursue mining with profit, it is necessary to pursue it with economy; and true economy is, to build the best of furnaces, with the best of materials. ”

“ Mining enterprises shall adopt scientific mining methods and dressing processes to reduce the amount of solid mining wastes to be generated and stored, such as tailings, coal gangue and waste rock.
The state encourages the adoption of advanced processes to comprehensively utilize such solid mining wastes as tailings, coal gangue and waste rock. ”

“ There is little waste in the mining or smelting of lead ores, and the slag, the waste, is always ready to be used again. In the refining and concentrating of lead the loss often amounts to as much as fifteen per cent. or twenty per cent. The best way to prevent final loss is to store all refuse until such time as the reworking becomes profitable. Improvement in methods has been great in the last fifteen years but more economical methods everywhere will be one of the necessities of the future. ”

“ Mining engineers say that on an average three feet of lumber are used in mining every ton of coal taken out. Assuming that 450,000,000 tons of coal are mined each year, this would mean that almost a billion and a half feet a [Pg 58] year are used in the coal mines, and this is about the amount shown by the government report.
After this comes wood for lath used in building. This product is usually taken from lower class wood or logging camp waste. Then comes the wood for distillation into wood-alcohol for use in manufacture and to furnish power in engines. ”

“ Besides the native Kafirs already mentioned, about two thousand white laborers are employed, the greater number being engaged in the offices and workshops and on the depositing floors.
Electric lights are used throughout the mines, and underground work is carried on both day and night by three shifts. Every known scientific device is pressed into service. In all of the deep mines the laborers are taken up and down the shafts in cages.
The method of mining and working the diamond-bearing earth at present employed is far more economical than in former years. ”

“ The workmen must be constantly on the alert, watchful for every sign of danger, but at the best some will be injured, some will perhaps be killed, by the falling masses from the roof. Yet this work must be done, otherwise coal mining would not be profitable, the waste would be too great. The coal that can be taken out under the prevailing systems will average only fifty per cent. of the whole body in the mine, and at least ten per cent. more will be lost in waste at the breaker, so that it behooves a company to have its pillars robbed as closely as possible. ”

“ The deeper the pits were sunk the greater the difficulty became in raising the blue-stuff. To add to the difficulties the rim wall of shale and basalt began to fall in, and the rain made the claims muddy and slippery or filled them with water. At a still greater depth water began to seep through the shale wall, and great masses of the rim occasionally fell in endangering life and almost precluding further mining unless concerted action were taken. ”

“ You enter Bilston across a tract of abandoned coal mines, and leave it for a similar waste. The forlorn and derelict condition of these deserted mining fields, strewn with shale and piled with fantastic, but always grim and forbidding, rubbish heaps, is a blot upon these busy districts, and a reproach to the condition of affairs that permits such things. Apart from the certainty that the mineral wealth of a country should be the property of the State rather than of the individual landowner, the question of the deserted coal-fields is a very serious one. ”

“ But we must remember that as the higher grade ores are exhausted it will become necessary to use the lower grades, and that prices will steadily advance as a result.
Iron is sometimes found almost directly under the ground, at other times deep in the earth. That which is found just below the surface is, of course, mined much more easily, more safely, more cheaply, and with far less loss than that which requires deep mining. ”

“ These mines, with their prolonged subterranean workings, their stamping and crushing mills, and the smelting works which have been established near them, fill the district with noise, hubbub, and smoke by night and day; but I had turned altogether aside from them into a still region, where each miner in solitude was grubbing for himself, and confiding to none his finds or disappointments. Agriculture restores and beautifies, mining destroys and devastates; turning the earth inside out, making it hideous, and blighting every green thing, as it usually blights man's heart and soul. ”

“ It does not mean that we shall let our mines of coal and iron lie unused, as the miser does his gold, but that we shall, while taking what we need, leave as little waste in the mine as possible, and shall use what we take in the most economical way. ”

“ It exists no more. All mine development work ceased long ago. There are green-stained carbonates on the surface, but there are no copper ore-bodies. The "mines" have been dismantled of their machinery and other equipment, and not even a lone watchman remains to point out to the desert-wayfarer the spot on which was reared the monumental mining-stock swindle of the century. Every dollar invested by the public is lost. ”

“ Coal left in the mines in order to conserve human lives cannot be classed as avoidable waste. A small part of the 200,000,000 tons is lost because it is intimately mixed with refuse and because the labor cost of recovering it and separating it from the refuse would be greater than its value. ”

“ 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. ”

“ We do not, of course, desire to keep our ore and coal in their existing state, because they must be used, but this does not mean that coal deposits and ore deposits should be exploited in excess of need, nor that the processes of mining should be wasteful. With proper care, soil and timber can be so conserved that neither the farm nor the forest will be destroyed. ”

“ The amount of gold and silver in circulation in the commercial world, to say nothing of the quantity so easily brought into circulation from the reservoir of plate, is so vast, that it receives the annual contributions from the mines much as the ocean receives the waters of the rivers, without sensible increase of its volume, and parts with the annual loss by detrition and shipwreck, as the sea yields its waters to evaporation, without sensible diminution of volume. The yearly supply and the yearly waste are small in comparison with the accumulations of ages ”

“ Upon the bed-rock is a deposit, from three to four feet in depth, of gravel and boulders, in which the gold is hidden. This is called by the miners "pay-dirt," and to remove it to the surface and wash it is the end of mining. It is an expensive and laborious process indeed. The water has first to be controlled; and in mines of not too great depth this is done by a drain ditch along the bed-rock, commenced many claims below. In this all the claim-holders are interested, and all contribute their quota of the labor and expense of digging it. ”

“ When we have to use drainage tunnels for our mines we carry the water off from the mouth of the tunnel in a flume, placing quicksilver in the riffles, and if it is a copper mine we place scrap iron in the water and we also use the water for power to assist us in mining, so that at the present time we extract and reduce ore at a lower rate than in other parts of the world, for there is no wastefill management and no overproduction, for in all our mining operations we work those that cost the least, and we operate our coal mines in the same way. ”

“ 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. ”

“ The facilities offered by the system of cross workings for disposing of the rubbish, most frequently a nuisance to the miner, and expensive to get rid of, the solidity which it procures by the banking up, the consequent economy of timbering, and saving of expense in the excavation of the rock, reckoning from the second story, are so many important circumstances which recommend this mode of 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. ”

“ Labor was scarce and high in this country, abundant and cheap in Europe. In order to make goods that could be sold at prices even above those of European countries, it was absolutely necessary to have cheap lumber, coal and iron.
But the time has come when we can no longer continue this waste without interfering with future development. Some of the resources have been so exhausted that a few years will see the end of their use in large commercial quantities. Others, such as coal and iron, will last much longer, but when they are gone they can never be replaced ”

“ We shall go far toward realizing our ideal of a beautiful America if we understand that the conservation of our resources means beauty, and that waste means ugliness. Proper conservation of our mineral resources will include the removal of the ugly, unsightly piles of culm, slag, and other refuse that lie about the mouth of the mines, and disfigure some of our most beautiful mountain scenery, for, as we have shown elsewhere, this should be used and not wasted. ”

“ The want of capitalists in the mine country, and of practical skill in the boring, blasting, sinking shafts and galleries, oppose obstacles to the [Pg 160] successful progress of mining. There is but one regular hearth-furnace for smelting in the whole district; and that is on the modern plan of English furnaces. There are not over four or five regular shafts in about forty mines; there is not an engine, either by horse, steam, or water power, for removing water from the mines, several of which have been abandoned on this account, with rich prospects of ore in view. ”

“ The recovery of the mere waste lead, in its sublimated form, around the open log furnaces of the country, promised to add a valuable item to the profit of the business. The most wasteful, hurried, and slovenly of all systems is pursued in exploring and raising the ore, by which the surface of the country is riddled with pit holes, in the most random manner ”

“ 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. ”

“ The mines, which represent the toil of centuries, and whose value is based solely on the needs of industry and the necessities of population, belong likewise to a few, and these few limit the mining of coal, or entirely forbid it when they find a better investment for their money. ”