Underground mining

“ Nor are skill and intelligence alone applicable to labor-saving devices themselves, because drilling and blasting Page 163 rock and executing other works underground are matters in which experience and judgment in the individual workman count to the highest degree.
How far skill affects production costs has had a thorough demonstration in West Australia. For a time after the opening of those mines only a small proportion of experienced men were obtainable. During this period the rock broken per man employed underground did not exceed the rate of 300 tons a year. ”

“ One is that contractors who strip off the overburden of soil, gravel, etc., in open pit mines, other contractors who load the ore in such mines into cars, and still others, usually four in a group, who take ore out of underground mines, are not included. But none of these are engaged in mining on their own account. Instead, they are working for those who are so engaged. However important their service, they are not principals in the business, but employees ”

“ Similarly interesting arguments were presented to this Court in the brief which was submitted here in the Tennessee case: 'The underground employees are not coal miners. They mine iron ore. We did not try out in the Courts below the claims and counter claims of the United Mine Workers of America and the coal operators. We do not see how we can try the issues between coal miners and coal operators on a record portraying the work, the environment and the detailed conditions in the iron mining industry. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ The seam is worked on successive levels, but, even then, it is impossible to prevent constant accidents from the fall of coal or the sudden collapse of a roof. Take it the world over, and ten miners are killed every day in collieries alone. I told you coal mining was dangerous. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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 miners do not support the earth by timber or pillars, as they should; the result is that the whole plot of about two hundred acres is gradually sinking, and this will eventually ruin the industry in that part of the deposit. In another part of the same field, a French company has purchased forty acres, and it is mining the whole tract and hoisting through one shaft by steam power. In that shaft they have sunk to a depth of six hundred feet, and are troubled with water and petroleum. These they pump out very much the same way as in coal and other mines, worked in a scientific manner. ”

“ 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. ”

“ As the coal is mined a certain proportion of it is ground into powder, and this fills the air and becomes a powerful explosive. Precautions are taken in most cases. The mines are sprinkled and state and national governments have done much to make mining safe, but at the best the occupation claims an unusually heavy toll in life and limb. ”

“ 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. ”

“ Scattered throughout the region are small mines, and also abandoned mines that were worked in the seventies, eighties, and nineties, when on nearly every lonely creek some miner patiently washed the gravelly sands for gold. Today most of the mining is in hardrock, although some small-scale placer operations are being carried on. Cutting across US 395, State 22 continues northeast along the east bank of the Columbia, which here cuts a tortuous channel through granite and other hard rocks to Northport and the Canadian Line. ”

“ Access to the buried deposits is gained by vertical shafts. Actual mining is now done to a large extent by continuous miners, machines which bore or rip the potash ore from the face and load it into shuttle cars in one continuous operation. The shuttle cars then transport the ore to conveyor belts which move it to the shafts for hoisting. Working conditions and safety are excellent and have led to high productivity from these mines. ”

“ 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. ”

“ A deep old mine which has been abandoned, is undertaken with a chance of less profit and a certainty of greater risk, than a new and promising discovery. In the first case encouragement is often held out, by fixing very moderate dues, while in the other, so much is too frequently demanded and given, as to prevent that share of profit accruing to the adventurers which is due to the great risk constantly attendant on all mining pursuits. ”

“ In shafts and levels for permanent use iron is an economical substitute. Wherever possible, new methods of mining are being introduced. Thus in the Lake Superior iron regions, the mine development is planned along lines almost unheard of ten years ago. In the first place the gravel which overlies the ore is stripped off, even if it is fifty feet thick. This is done with steam shovels, which load the gravel upon cars. These are then pulled away by one locomotive while a second places new “empties” in position to be filled. One shovel will load from 150 to 175 cars a day ”

“ 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. ”

“ As their open trenches and pits could be worked only in the summers, and by methods that made their operations much slower than those of modern miners, no great advance of their work was possible during the working time of each season; and yet remains of their mining works have been discovered wherever mines have been opened in our day; and, as previously stated, they are known to exist in heavy forests, where the modern mining works have not yet been established. ”

“ Such companies, with superior mechanical facilities to do much labor, in a short space, will be enabled to go over the whole mineral field, although already dug over by individuals, and reap yet a rich reward of their efforts. And when there will be no more gold washing to be done, then a new era in the mining of the country will commence—we mean a regular system of mining by sinking shafts into the very bowels of the rocks will be entered upon. ”

“ 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. ”

“ Since the first discovery of lead in this Territory, the number of mines has been much increased, and hardly a season passes without some new discovery. Every discovery of importance soon becomes the centre of mining attraction. As the ore is found in the diluvial soil, it is generally exhausted on reaching the solid rock; and after penetrating a considerable area of the surface with any, or but partial success, the locality is abandoned, and a new one sought. As the mines are worked without capital, and the ore is dispersed over a wide area, the number of localities is almost indefinite. ”

“ The remarkable mines being developed in the Cœur d’Alene, Okanagan, Colville, Pine Creek, Cracker Creek and other districts, have placed this region in the front rank of mining interests in the United States, and point to a future of unbroken prosperity for many years. At some point so situated as to reach each of these districts with almost equal facility, and where all the essentials for the reduction of ores, such as coal, iron, wood, limestone, etc., exist or can be cheaply procured, will be established immense reduction works. ”

“ 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. ”

“ It may be said, however, that the mines were chiefly held by small local companies working on very limited capital, with the inevitable consequence that when trouble of this kind was met with there were no funds available for the prospecting and deadwork necessary to relocate the broken ore-shoots, and little effort was made in this direction. Apart from that, the conduct of mining operations was usually in the hands of men who, while good practical miners, had no special training in geological observation, and were thus ill equipped for the carrying-out of the search to advantage. ”

“ New processes and more railroads have caused fortunes to be made out of low grade ore when there is enough of it. Some people would rather have a big lode of low grade ore than a pockety vein of rich quartz. As you know, abandoned mines are being leased all over the state, and abandoned prospect holes investigated. Well, there you are. This morning two mining engineers from New York came into my office with a tale of woe. They came out here to look about, and after considerable travel within a reasonable distance of railroads found an old prospect hole with a shaft sunk about fifty feet. ”

“ When, therefore, adjacent or underlying excavations cause earth movements in a neighbor's property, litigation is likely to ensue and the geologist is likely to be called in. The long-wall method of coal mining, extensively practiced in certain parts of the United States, is slowly withdrawing support from the ground overlying the coal seams, resulting in damages to surface structures and in some cases to overlying mineral deposits. ”