Getting Gold: A Practical Treatise for Prospectors, Miners and Students

by J. C. F. Johnson

But returning to the formation of the Company, care should be taken in appointing Directors that at least one member of the Board is selected on account of his special technical knowledge of mining, and others for their special business capacity. The ornamental men with high sounding names should not be required in legitimate ventures. Also, it is most important that the business Manager or Secretary should be a specially qualified man, who by experience has learned what are the requirements of a mine doing a certain amount of work, so that a proper check may be kept on the expenses. The more Companies such a Secretary has the better, as one qualified man can supervise a large staff of clerks, who would themselves be qualifying for similar work, and gaining a useful and varied experience of mining business. An office of this description having charge of a large number of mines is, in its way, a technical school, and lads trained therein would be in demand as mine pursers, a very responsible and necessary officer in a big mine.

With respect to the men to whom the actual mining and treatment of ores and machinery is committed the greatest mistakes of the past have been that too much has been required from one man, a combination not to be found probably in one man in a thousand. Such Admirable Crichtons are rare in any profession or business, and that of mining is no exception. Men who profess too much are to be distrusted. Your best men are they who concentrate their energies and intellects in special directions. The Mining Manager should, if possible, be chosen from men holding certificates of competency from some technical mining school and, of course, should, in addition, have some practical experience, not necessarily as Head Manager. He should understand practical mine surveying and calculation of quantities, be able to dial and plot out his workings, and prepare an intelligible plan thereof for the use of the Directors, and should understand sufficient of physics, particularly pneumatics and hydraulics, to ensure thoroughly efficient pumping operations without loss of power from unnecessarily heavy appliances. Any other scientific knowledge applicable to his business which he may have acquired will tell in his favour, but he must, above all things, be a thoroughly practical man. Such men will in time be more readily procurable, as boys who have passed through the various Schools of Mines will be sent to learn their business practically at the mines just as we now, having given a lad a course of naval instruction, send him to sea to learn the practical part of his life's work.

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, etc., 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, etc. 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 expenses.

"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.