Principles of Mining: Valuation, Organization and Administration

by Herbert Hoover

There is now demanded of the mining specialist a wide knowledge of certain branches of civil, mechanical, electrical, and chemical engineering, geology, economics, the humanities, and what not; and in addition to all this, engineering sense, executive ability, business experience, and financial insight. Engineering sense is that fine blend of honesty, ingenuity, and intuition which is a mental endowment apart from knowledge and experience. Its possession is the test of the real engineer. It distinguishes engineering as a profession from engineering as a trade. It is this sense that elevates the possessor to the profession which is, of all others, the most difficult and the most comprehensive. Financial insight can only come by experience in the commercial world. Likewise must come the experience in technical work which gives balance to theoretical training. Executive ability is that capacity to coördinate and command the best results from other men,—it is a natural endowment. which can be cultivated only in actual use.

The practice of mine engineering being so large a mixture of business, it follows that the whole of the training of this profession cannot be had in schools and universities. The commercial and executive side of the work cannot be taught; it must be absorbed by actual participation in the industry. Nor is it impossible to rise to great eminence in the profession without university training, as witness some of our greatest engineers. The university can do much; it can give a broad basis of knowledge and mental training, and can inculcate moral feeling, which entitles men to lead their fellows. It can teach the technical fundamentals of the multifold sciences which the engineer should know and must apply. But after the university must come a schooling in men and things equally thorough and more arduous.

In this predominating demand for commercial qualifications over the technical ones, the mining profession has differentiated to a great degree from its brother engineering branches. That this is true will be most apparent if we examine the course through which engineering projects march, and the demands of each stage on their road to completion.

The life of all engineering projects in a general way may be divided into five phases:[*]—

[Footnote *: These phases do not necessarily proceed step by step. For an expanding works especially, all of them may be in process at the same time, but if each item be considered to itself, this is the usual progress, or should be when properly engineered.]

1.	Determination of the value of the project.
2.	Determination of the method of attack.
3.	The detailed delineation of method, means, and tools.
4.	The execution of the works.
5.	The operation of the completed works.

These various stages of the resolution of an engineering project require in each more or less of every quality of intellect, training, and character. At the different stages, certain of these qualities are in predominant demand: in the first stage, financial insight; in the second, "engineering sense"; in the third, training and experience; in the fourth and fifth, executive ability.

A certain amount of compass over the project during the whole five stages is required by all branches of the engineering profession,—harbor, canal, railway, waterworks, bridge, mechanical, electrical, etc.; but in none of them so completely and in such constant combination is this demanded as in mining.

The determination of the commercial value of projects is a greater section of the mining engineer's occupation than of the other engineering branches. Mines are operated only to earn immediate profits. No question of public utility enters, so that all mining projects have by this necessity to be from the first weighed from a profit point of view alone. The determination of this question is one which demands such an amount of technical knowledge and experience that those who are not experts cannot enter the field,—therefore the service of the engineer is always demanded in their satisfactory solution. Moreover, unlike most other engineering projects, mines have a faculty of changing owners several times during their career, so that every one has to survive a periodic revaluation. From the other branches of engineering, the electrical engineer is the most often called upon to weigh the probabilities of financial success of the enterprise, but usually his presence in this capacity is called upon only at the initial stage, for electrical enterprises seldom change hands. The mechanical and chemical branches are usually called upon for purely technical service on the demand of the operator, who decides the financial problems for himself, or upon works forming but units in undertakings where the opinion on the financial advisability is compassed by some other branch of the engineering profession. The other engineering branches, even less often, are called in for financial advice, and in those branches involving works of public utility the profit-and-loss phase scarcely enters at all.

Given that the project has been determined upon, and that the enterprise has entered upon the second stage, that of determination of method of attack, the immediate commercial result limits the mining engineer's every plan and design to a greater degree than it does the other engineering specialists. The question of capital and profit dogs his every footstep, for all mines are ephemeral; the life of any given mine is short. Metal mines have indeed the shortest lives of any. While some exceptional ones may produce through one generation, under the stress of modern methods a much larger proportion extend only over a decade or two. But of more pertinent force is the fact that as the certain life of a metal mine can be positively known in most cases but a short period beyond the actual time required to exhaust the ore in sight, not even a decade of life to the enterprise is available for the estimates of the mining engineer. Mining works are of no value when the mine is exhausted; the capital invested must be recovered in very short periods, and therefore all mining works must be of the most temporary character that will answer. The mining engineer cannot erect a works that will last as long as possible; it is to last as long as the mine only, and, in laying it out, forefront in his mind must be the question, Can its cost be redeemed in the period of use of which I am certain it will find employment? If not, will some cheaper device, which gives less efficiency, do? The harbor engineer, the railway engineer, the mechanical engineer, build as solidly as they can, for the demand for the work will exist till after their materials are worn out, however soundly they construct.