Plate V.—South Australian School of Mines and Industries
But, of course, more is wanted on a mine than a man who can direct the sinking of shafts, driving of levels, and stoping of the lode. Much loss and disappointment have resulted in the past from unsuitable, ineffective, or badly designed and erected machinery, whether for working the mine or treating the ores. To obviate this defect a first-class mining engineer is required.
Then, also, day by day we are more surely learning that mining in all its branches is a science, and that the treatment of ores and extraction of the metals is daily becoming more and more the work of the laboratory rather than of the rule-of-thumb procedure of the past. Every mine, whether it be of gold, silver, tin, copper, or other metal, requires the supervision of a thoroughly qualified metallurgist and chemist, and one who is conversant with the newest processes for the extraction of the metals from their ores and matrices.
It has then been stated that to ensure effective working each mine requires, in addition to competent directors, a business-manager, mining-manager, and assistants, engineer, chemist, and metallurgist, with assistant assayers, &c., all highly qualified men. But it will be asked, how are many struggling mines in sparsely populated countries to obtain the services of all these eminent scientists? The reply is by co-operation. One of the most ruinous mistakes of the past has been that each little mining venture has started on an independent course, with different management, separate machinery, &c. Can it then be wondered at that our gold-mining is not always successful?
Under a co-operative system all that each individual mine would require would be a qualified, practical miner capable of opening and securing the ground in a miner-like manner, and a good working engineer; and in gold-mining, where the gold is free in its matrix, a professional amalgamator, or lixiviator. For the rest, half a dozen or more mines may collectively retain the services of a mine manager of high attainments as general inspector and superintendent, and the same system could be adopted with respect to an advising metallurgist and an engineer. For gold, as indeed for other metals, a central extracting works, where the ores could be scientifically treated in quantity, might be erected at joint cost, or might easily be arranged for as a separate business.
A very fruitful cause of failure is the fatuous tendency of directors and mine managers to adopt new processes and inventions simply because they are new. As an inventor in a small way myself, and one who is always on the watch for improved methods, I do not wish to discourage intelligent progress; but the greatest care should be exercised by those having the control of the money of shareholders in mining properties before adopting any new machinery or process.
We have seen, and unfortunately shall see, many a promising mining company brought to grief by this popular error. The directors of mining companies might, to use an American saying, “paste this in their hats” as a useful and safe aphorism. “Let others do the experimenting; we are willing to pay only for proved improvements.” I can cordially endorse every word of the following extracts from Messrs. McDermott and Duffield’s admirable little work, “Losses in Gold Amalgamation.”
“Some directors of mining companies are naturally inclined to listen to the specious promises of inventors of novel processes and new machinery, forgetting their own personal disadvantage in any argument on such matters, and assuming a confidence in the logic of their own conclusions, while they ignore the fruitful experience of thousands of practical men who are engaged in the mining business. The repeated failures of directors in sending out new machinery to their mines ought by this time to be a sufficient warning against increasing risks that are at once natural and unavoidable, and to deter them from plunging their shareholders into experiments which, in ninety-nine cases out of a hundred, result in nothing but excessive and needless expense.
“It is certain that new machines and new processes are, and will be, given attention by mining men in proportion to their probable merits; but the proper place for experiments is in a mill already as successful as under known processes it can be made. In a new enterprise, even when the expense of an experiment is undertaken by the inventor, the loss to the mine-owner in case of failure must be very great, both in time and general running expenses. Directors should not believe that a willingness to risk cash in proving an invention is necessarily any proof of value of the same; it is only a measure of the faith of the inventor, which is hardly a safe standard to risk shareholders’ money by.
“The variety of modifications in approved processes ought at least to suggest the desirability of exhausting the known, before drawing on the unknown and purely speculative. It should also be borne in mind that what might appear at first sight to be new processes, and even new machinery, are, in fact, often nothing but old contrivances and plausible theories long ago exploded among practical men.
“Many mining companies have been ruined, without any reference to their mines, through men deciding on the reasonableness of new process and machinery who have no knowledge of the business in hand. It is assumed often, that if an inventor or manufacturer of new machinery will agree to guarantee success, or take no pay if not successful, the company takes no risk. In actual fact a whole year is wasted in most cases, failure spoils the reputation of the company, running expenses have continued, and further working capital cannot be raised, because all concerned have lost confidence by the failure to obtain returns promised. All this in addition to the regular, unavoidable risks of mining itself, which may, at any moment during the year lost, call for increased expenses and increased faith in ultimate success. To the mining man who makes money by the business, the natural risks of mining is all he will take; it is sufficient; and when he invests more money in machinery he takes good care that he takes no chances of either failure or delay.
“The following are rules which no mining company or individual mine-owner can afford to neglect.
“(1) The risk should be confined to mining. No body of directors is justified in taking a shareholder’s money and investing it in new processes or machinery when the subscription was simply for a mining venture. Directors are invariably incapable of deciding whether a so-called improvement in machinery or process is really so or not, and the reasonable course is to follow established precedents.
“(2) The risk of selecting an incompetent manager should be reduced to minimum by taking a man with a successful record in the particular work to be done. The manager selected should be prohibited, as much as the directors, from experimenting with new methods or machinery. A really experienced man will require no check in this direction, as he will not risk ruining his reputation.
“(3) The only time for a company to experiment is when the mine is paying well by the usual methods, and the treasury is in a condition to speculate a little in possible improvements without jeopardising regular returns.”
Probably this is the best place to insert another word of warning to directors who are not mining specialists, and also to investors in gold mining shares. Assays of auriferous lode material should always be checked by the results of trials on large quantities. The reason is obvious. First, the prospector or company promoter is not in the least likely to pick the worst piece of stone in the heap for assay; and, secondly, even should the sample be selected with the sole object of getting a fair result, no living man can judge the value of a gold lode by the result of treatment of an ounce of stone. So when it is reported that a sample of rock from the Golden Mint Mine, Golconda, assays at the rate of 2,546 oz. 13 dwt. and 21 grs. to the ton, and that there are thousands of tons of similar stone in sight, the statement should be received with due caution. The assay is doubtless correct, but the deductions therefrom are most misleading.