Mining

“ The miners are in the habit of flattering the vanity of their fair visitors by scattering a handful of "salt" (which, strange to say, is exactly the color of gold-dust, and has the remarkable property of often bringing to light very curious lumps of the ore) through the dirt before the dainty fingers touch it, and the dear creatures go home with their treasures, firmly believing that mining is the prettiest pastime in the world. ”

“ A mine thus consists of a series of horizontal galleries generally one above the other, but sometimes running parallel, traversed at irregular intervals by vertical shafts, and all communicating together, either directly or indirectly.
A person unacquainted with the details of mining, on hearing of many hundreds of men employed in a single mine, might naturally imagine that a visit to its recesses would afford a picturesque and imposing spectacle of gregarious labour and bustle, tremendous noise, and much artificial brilliancy to cheer the gloom. ”

“ But in the annals of mining discovery, how often has the resources of a great mine been made known and available to human enterprise by the crude, simple apparatus of a travelling prospector, and how many hopeless and worthless "properties" have swallowed the contributions of a gullable public through the ornamental reports of the skilled and cultured proprietor of an elaborate laboratory! ”

“ All the world over, the operation of winning from the soil and rendering marketable the many valuable ores and mine products which abound is daily becoming more and more a scientific business which cannot be too carefully entered into or too skilfully conducted. The days of the dolly and windlass, of the puddler, cradle, and tin dish, are rapidly receding; and mining, either in lode or alluvial working, is being more generally recognised as one of the exact sciences. In the past, mining has been carried on in a very haphazard fashion, to which much of its non-success may be attributed. ”

“ Mining may be said to begin whenever there is produced an output upon which there is some profit. Exploitation may be in valuable ground. If so, we may say that mining is in progress during the exploitation. The driving of levels or drifts in an ore body—or of entries in a bed of coal—produces the valuable products of the mine, and we may, therefore, consider that mining is taking place.
The driving of a crosscut through barren rock to reach an ore body is dead work; but the driving of a drift or level in a vein is either exploitation or mining. Dead work produces no ore. ”

“ 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. ”

“ An ore must be an aggregate or association of natural [20] minerals, or a single mineral, from which metal may be profitably recovered. Mines are excavations in the earth from which ore, coal or gems are taken. Mining is the art or practice of operating mines.
Throughout the subject, we see the inseparable idea of profit. The work of carrying on operations in a railroad tunnel is not mining; the driving of adits through barren rocks to reach ore bodies is not mining; the sinking of shafts through worthless "wash" or rocks with a view of opening avenues for the removal of ore is not mining. ”

“ Mining, altogether, is an extraordinary industry. But almost more extraordinary than the ignorance of London Boards, and the recklessness of British investors, is the haphazard way in which engineers and managers are selected. ”

“ 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. ”

“ Indeed, this system of mining partakes of the nature of quarrying rather than that of mining in the ordinary sense, the ore being scooped from the surface of the ground. One naturally thinks of a mine as being subterranean; but in the great open-pit mines in the Lake Superior region, which are the largest mines in the world, all the mining is done at the surface of the earth. ”

“ I’m taking you to the best mining state in the Union, where you can handle the stuff right on the ground, find your own lodes, study mineralogy with the minerals in your own hands,—so you will know carbonate ore when you see it. That’s half the battle; the technology of process work you can pick up right at the mines and mills. There’s lots of room for the young mineralogist who can go right along with his own saddle horse and outfit, take care of himself in a dry country, and know real lodes when he sees them. ”

“ This prevents many from engaging in mining on the public lands, and especially those who would be best able to prosecute the business; and of the number who take leases, a great proportion continue to pursue the desultory method of mining in alluvial [20] ground, introduced at an early period by the French, but which is attended with very great uncertainty.
Improvements remain also to be introduced in regard to the processes of mining, the furnaces employed, and the method of raising the ore. ”

“ In the systematic mining of larger deposits, the simplest plan consists in mining large areas by means of numerous working-places under the protection of pillars of mineral left for the purpose, and later mining these pillars systematically, allowing the overlying rock beds to fall and fill the abandoned workings. In shallow mines the pillars are small and the saving of the mineral of minor importance. ”

“ It is becoming more and more important for the active mining man to post himself upon the methods and economies of this latter-day mining practice. The development of this open or surface mining has introduced entirely new economic ideas. With no costs for timbering of mine passages, for ventilation, or for hoisting, and with a very material decrease in manual labor per ton mined, immense masses of rocks are now really ore, although a few years ago they were nothing but lean, country rock. ”

“ As the tide of emigration began to flow into the mining region, the lucky hits upon rich deposits, of course, began to grow scarcer, until, when an immense population was scattered throughout the whole golden country, the success of the mining operations began to depend more upon the amount of labour performed than upon the good fortune to strike into an unfurrowed soil, rich in gold. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ By having no scientific knowledge of mineral veins and geological structure, as practically adopted in Europe, all rule in the process of mining and raising the ore had degenerated into mere guess work, and thousands of dollars had been wasted, in some places, where the application of some of the plainest mining principles, would not have warranted the removal of a shovel full of earth. In short, there was here observed, a blending of the miner and farmer character. Almost every farmer was a miner. ”

“ Mining operations are classified, by industry, on the basis of the principal mineral produced, or, if there is no production, on the basis of the principal mineral for which exploration or development work is in process. The mining of culm banks, ore dumps, and tailing piles is classified as mining according to the principal mineral product derived. ”

“ The diversity of your productions, your mines of gold and silver, iron, lead and coal, placed in such proximity as to make the work of mining and reduction easy and [432] economical; your well-watered valley, capable, under the skilful touch of the husbandman, of transformation from barren wastes into fruitful fields—all these lying in easy reach and intercommunication, one with the other, must make the elements of a great commercial and political community. You do not need to doubt the future. ”

“ By the help of these and a vast number of other kindred inventions, the business of mining in all its branches has been revolutionised and transformed, even within the last half century. With the vast increase in the output of coal, and of ores, and the incalculable saving of hand labour, the number of operators has been increased in the same proportion, their wages increased, their hours of labour shortened, and their comforts multiplied in variety and quantity, with a diminished cost. ”

“ Not so with silver and gold mines. They are most unreliable in both quality and quantity. Costly buildings and machinery are often erected to economize the mining of the ore, only to find no mine to operate by the time the buildings are completed and the machinery is working. ”

“ Every inhabitant of the valley having the right of working this mine, by paying a very small sum of money to the Commune, it cannot be expected that the mining operations are conducted with that method which is the result of theoretical and practical knowledge combined. Every one endeavours to dig out the greatest possible quantity of ore with the least possible trouble and expense to himself. ”

“ In the matter of circumstances, means, and paying results from mining, it has been shown, and it is incontestible, that the industry now stands, in every particular, upon a much more advantageous basis than it ever enjoyed. ”

“ In this the stoping contracts run vertically, and each party of contractors has one or more mills or timbered chutes through which the rich ore is conveyed to the level below and loaded in cars. The ore as mined is hand-picked and the barren material allowed to remain in the stope where it falls. In this method of mining no pillars need be left under the levels, as the rock-filling gives sufficient support to the roof. This method of mining affords the maximum of safety to the miners. ”

“ After a mine is once opened and preparations have all been perfected to operate [106] upon a certain scale of output, it is quite essential that exploitation and production be maintained without material fluctuations, if the greatest economy is to be attained. Exploitation, i.e., development work, must be kept well in advance of actual mining operations to assure plenty of working space for the extraction of the normal output. ”

“ The middle of the past century seems to have been a critical period in the mining industry of the earth. There was a great impetus given to mining by the greed for gold which caused the settlement of our western states and the Australian states, as already mentioned. But there gradually followed the opening up of mining in many other and hitherto unpopulated and uncivilized portions of the globe. ”

“ 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. ”

“ There are the usual paraphernalia of the mining industry, which we have already described in other places. In every direction there are mining-shafts and reduction-works, and for miles and miles around the country is full of prospecting holes, where gold has been sought but not found, at least in paying quantities. ”

“ In proportion to the successive acquisition to these subterranean works which are daily advancing, will be the increased operations of the mines, and consequently the increased prosperity of the mining interest, which had most astonishingly fallen from the degree it had attained in former years. ”

“ The mining first began in those dim British days before the Romans came, and it has continued on down through the centuries till the influx of foreign lead brought prices below £25 a ton, and the mines could not be worked at a profit. ”

“ The desultory manner in which the mines have been wrought, and the imperfect method in which accounts have been kept, when kept at all, with other circumstances, which are in some measure incidental to the operations of mining in a new country, oppose so many obstacles in the way of obtaining the desired information, that I find it impossible to present a correct statement, from authentic sources, of the annual product of the mines for any series of years. ”