The south-western. [volume] (Shreveport, La.) 1852-1870, 1868-07-08
Gold Mining
THE DECLINE IN PLACER GOLD MINING AND THE CAUSE.
From the Sacramento ical y IIninul

J Gold Mining.
THE DECLINE IN PLACER GOLD MINING AND THE cAUs
From the Sacramento (Cal.) Union.
Every :" old Californian must have noticed Il
rapid decline of placer gold mining since the We
1862 That year the gold product of the State W
forty millions. Less than fifth Of this was fro
quartz mining, leaving say thirty-two millions Il
yield of the placers Three years after, in 1866, Ro
Browne reported the entire gold production of Cal
fornia at twenty-five Millions falling off of thir
seven and a half per cent in three years, or twely
and half per cent. per year. From the want of a
curate statistics we unable to separate with pr
csion, the production of gold by quartz mills fro
the grand total of receipts at San Francisco but fro
the large increase in quartz mining, and the improv
ments made in 1865 and 1866 in the methods of sa'
ing the gold and crushing the rock, it is not perhap
too high estimate to say that half OF the aggregat
yield was the result of quartz mining. This woul
leave the meager production of twelve and half mi
lions from all pacers for the year 1s66-a declin
of nearly 10 per cent. in the production by that sol
of mining for three years. 231 per cent per year
We have not seen the estimates for any year sine
1867 but it is probable that, from the manifest declin
in the old placer settlements in the last year. there ha
been heavy falling off in the aggregate of placer pro
duction. If this thing continues without abatement
it will require but few years more to reduce the pa
Ger gold yield of our mines to something nearly nom
inal. Experience has demonstrated that the quart
mines cannot keep up the annual to anything like th
high figures shown in 1862 and for ten or twelve year
prior to that.
Just now is matter of the first Importance to the
Government of the United States that all its mines
precious metals shall be made to yield to the utmost
of their capabilities. For this, in part, Congress has
been giving away the public lands and loaning the
bonds of the nation to railway companies, so thai
transportation and travel from the seaboard to the
mining regions of the Rocky and Sierra Nevada noun
tains may be cheapened and every facility created to
encourage and enlarge this sort of industry. There
hopes three years ago that by the year 1870 the
total geld and silver yield of the country might be run
up 81 900 900 per But if the placers of
California are by that time to prove failure, there is
reasonable ground to suspect that those of Oregon,
Idaho, Montana and Colorado will also soon be ex-
hausted and abandoned and the expectation of larger
yield in 1870 than be utterly disappointed Quartz
mining progresses bat slowly. 1t has taken fifteen
years of unremittent effort and experiment to make it
well established Industry in California; and still its
production is hardly equal to fourth of the annual
placer yield ten years ago. In fifteen twenty years
more its progress will probably have touched the point
of calculation here in Nevada Colorado and Montana,
and then the quartz mines may show yield even
greater than the placers in their best days; but mean
while the country is not in condition to bear the de-
cline and abandonment of placer mining, which must
inevitably great scarcity of gold, considering
that the annual balance against US in trade with the
fifty millions required to pay the interest on eight Or
nine hundred millions of bonds, will not aggregate
less than $3.50 OOO,O O0O If our mines fall short of
their present yield, it will require something
than all California grain surplus to square accounts
with Europe. Il is true, much may be reekoned upon
the silver mines of Nevada and upon the mine of the
Rocky Mountains, to which, if the Government con-
trolls the railroads and not the railroads the Govern
ment there will be great impulse given in the next five
years; but if the production in those regions be
doubled it would not much more than make up for
our apprehended decline in placer mining.
We think if the causes of the sudden and great de-
cline in placer mining we'll understood,
there would be healthy revival in that branch of
our industry. Some of them easily understood
and rremedable; as, first, the manifest exhaustion
of the easiest worked least expensive and remu-
neratve mnes-the rich gulch and creek deposits,
the shallow, dry, surface diggngs, and the most
cessibe stretches in river beds. These all ex-
hausted. Time was when labor, unaided by capital
and unorgansed, could go into such places and at an
expense of less than eight dollars, pocket of
gold That time has gone by. Placer mining is no
longer profitable to speculative industry unless it is
backed up by capital, at least organised into
panies commanding credit. Hardly any placer min
ing enterprise promises success without capital
of from ten to fifty thousand dollars to start upon
either in cash credit; and then it requires to
be conducted strictly economical and business
methods. Companies, too must take their chances of
failure as in any other speculative business. Among
the prominent causes of the decline in placer mining
which in part renediable, may be mentioned the
VI eiittEESe ldDOf lOTCeS III tQe
mining counties. These causes are most prevalent in
the counties south of Nevada and north of Butte. The
original population has not been supplied with fresh
material by immigration and the capital, enterprise
and muscle of the old material appear to be quite
hausted. They neither make nor attempt any new
discoveries, and do not prosecute labor with the
ergy intelligence which they did ten years ago
They accept the situation with sod Indifference to
the future, and appear generally to be living upon the
credit of wasted fortunes. We do not advise any
American immigrant in search of labor good and
permanent home to go the mines as long as there
is an opening for farm in the valleys of the State
because think these valleys present the finest open
ing for cheap, pleasant and prosperous settlements
anywhere to be found in the world. But we do think
that the combined labor of men, willing to work
at fair wages for few years. and ready to risk the
chances OF fortune if backed up by reasonable amount
of ready cash of credit (Which honest industry is all
ways able to command in this country could hardly
fail to do we'll in almost any of the abandoned dis
tricts south Of the American river There hun
dreds OF gulches, dry creeks lin summer and autumn)
and river beds, with such companies, at the present
cheapened rates of day labor of subsistence, of um
Der, and of everything the miner uses, that might
be worked with great profit, though they could not
have been when they were abandoned six or eight
years ago The trouble is not that placers are
wholly worked out, as many suppose but that the old
miners have either left for countries or are bro
ken in health and spirit. New men are needed, and
with them new IDEAS ana an entrely new system OF
labor There is place in the world where
Tie plan of associated labor would pay better than in
these abandoned Mines 1t would bring back new
life and capital and though it would cost much more
than the first surface scrapngs to realise ounce of
gold, the economy of labor and living would be so
much improved that the profits would be steady and
continued without interruption from the manifold
ualties which, in past days, levied the earnings of
onehat of the year to meet the expenses of the other
and unproductive half. If trusty of experience
in the mines would unite with of means in San
Francisco to work the hundreds and thousands of aba
doned creeks and guches in Ell Dorado, Amador, Cal
averas and Tuolumne, where piled up millions of
uns of the richest tailings, we make no doubt that
life would be given to the placer rnines and that
many an abandoned region would soon ring with the
cheerful voice of prosperous industry. 1t presents
much better and field for speculation than quartz
mining or wildcat stocks in Nevada, sweetwater and
Arizona.
FLEXIBLE GLAss.-1f substance possessing all the
properties of glass but its rgdty and Tranquility could
oe discovered it is easy to conceive what number of
it would have in the arts and especially in photo
yraphy. A few months ago NJ Marion, of Paris, an
bounced material as ''vitrfed India rubber Sheet"
which was described possessing many of the prop