Quoting from literature distributed by the mining company the following might be of interest:
“The Black Hills are highly mineralized, containing practically every known element to a greater or lesser degree. Lead is the home of the Homestake mining company, the largest gold mining concern in the world. The company has been running continuously since 1877 and has taken from the ground approximately 56,000,000 tons of ore yielding $200,000,000 of gold (now over $212,000,000.) In order to produce an annual output of $6,000,000 about 2,000 men are steadily employed. The average daily output is 43500 tons, or 1,750,000 tons annually. There is enough ore blocked out to furnish the mills with this many tons a day for nine years.
“More than 1,554,117 pounds, or 3,108,234 sticks of 40% dynamite was used in 1927, costing over $500 a day. In 1927, 3,816,724 feet or over 722 miles of fuse was used. If this were in one length it would take 971 days, 21 hours and 22 minutes and 8 seconds for the flame to traverse it. More than a million blasts were set off during the year.
“The company has never undertaken to furnish houses. It has, however, encouraged the building of homes by giving free permits to occupy company ground and by advancing the purchase price and allowing the employee to pay on the monthly payment plan with a low rate of interest on deferred payments. After forty years of continuous operation as the sole industry of the community there are few company owned houses in Lead. Under this policy the town has grown from a typical mining camp with its log cabins and board shacks, into a modern small city with paved streets, sewer and water systems, electric lights and beautiful homes, owned largely by their occupants. The grocer, the butcher, and the hardware dealer, the clothier and the real estate men carry on their business in this mining camp as in an ordinary town of equal size. Keen competition keeps prices at a reasonable level.
“No part of the welfare work at the Homestake has met the needs of the people more fully than the free library, originally a Christmas gift from the late Phoebe H. Hearst in 1894, now carried on through the generosity of her son William Randolph Hearst, with present quarters on the second floor of the recreation building. Now the library contains approximately 14,000 volumes. In the reading room are eighty periodicals, of which two are foreign. The close proximity of the high school enables the library to render valuable assistance to teachers and pupils.
“A smoking room is provided for the men, and the children have an alcove for their particular use, provided with low tables and suitable chairs. One end of the stack room is used for mineral exhibits, especially the minerals of the Black Hills region.
“The Kindergarten, opened in 1900, is also maintained by the generosity of the Hearst family.
“A small, but well kept park nearby provides a place for outdoor play during the summer months. The kindergarten has been an inestimable aid to the public school by giving the children of foreign birth a start in the English language and teaching them something of American ways and manners, thus relieving them of the handicap resulting from their foreign parentage. It has also proved a large factor in Americanizing the parents by both direct and indirect contact with the teachers.
“The Homestake company, supporting a liberal policy toward the schools, feels that it is fully repaid by the stabilizing influence on its working force, due to the fact that men with families are attracted to Lead on account of its educational advantages. Many of the young men who are now holding important positions in the shops, mills, assay and engineering departments are graduates of the Lead High School.
