Connecticut western news., 1894-01-25
OUR MONTANA LETTER.
Editor of Nesos
 Dear Sir:

am afraid that you will begin to think that your Montana correspondent Is frozen up with the cold that we are supposed to have out here, so I will hasten to let you know that he is not. As for the cold, there Is none to speak of. have not had a fire in my furnace | for a month. It has not been needed. About the end of November we had a cold snap and 1t was needed for about | ten days, but since then the weather has been superb.
 I want now to counteract,i in a certain measure, the impression common among Eastern people that the West is all gone to the dogs because silver and wool are low in price. You people seem to think that because there are lot of calamity howlers in this country that we are all about at the end of our string. But you will see by few facts and figures that 1t is not so in our par ticular case at all events, though it probably is true to a greater or less de- gree with other sections that have only these resources to fall back upon.
 All this season the silver smelter here has been in operation without a shut down, which it never has done before. The silver mines at Neihart, which is one of the new aud most promising districts tributary to us in respect to silver and lead production, are to-day giving em- ployment to more men than ever before in their history. Moreover several of the silver mines there have recently declared dividends.
 Last summer, though the wool clip was the largest on record here, being about half a million pounds greater than the year before, there was short age of about S40O, ,000OO in the receipts of wool money compared with the re- turns from last years sales. New most towns that had two of their important industries paralized in this manner would have been in pretty bad shape. < Montana Copper Shelter was em- ploying about 500 men last spring. All summer they have been increasing their capacity for turning out copper and steadily adding to their payroll here. In October they had 900 men on 1t. I had occasion to go down to their works yesterday to see their time-clerk. He was busy getting up the December payroll so that he would be ready to pay the men on the 18th, and he said that there were something over $50 names on it. On New Years day I was talking with one of the men who works in their concentrator and he said they were short handed there, and he had to work thirteen hours on a shift. The works run twenty four hours day and seven days a week. They have been running about year and a half now, and the only time the smoke has stop- | ped coming out of their big stack was | during the afternoon of last Fourth of July, and on the 9th it was pouring out in as great volumes as ever. These works have proven even more satisfac- tory than their projectors anticipated in the way of the amount saved in the cost of smelting. They expected to be able to cave one cent pound. They are saving from one cent and half to two cents pound, and when one re- members that their output is over three million pounds 0 month, and steadily i increasing, he will see what saving that makes. He will also see that this fact has great significance in regard to the future of copper smelting, for the price of copper has been very low this past year, though it is now advan- cing, and if two cents pound can be saved by smelling at Great Falls, how long will 1t be before the other big cop- per companies will have to do one of two things, either come to Great Falls and take advantage of the cheap water power and cheap coal, or sbut down? When 1t Is remembered that Montana last year produced more copper than all the rest of he Uaited States together it gives one pretty good idea of the probable future of Great Falls as a cop per smelting center.
 In all these hard times the Sand Coulee coal mines have been running full time, employing about 400 men, and turning out about 1,500 tons day. In Octo- Der the demand had increased so that the company had to increase their out put to 2,300 tons day. We thought that was doing pretty well, but 1t did not stop there, for. when I was out to the mines last week (they are about ten miles from the city) I found that to keep up with the demand they are now turning out 3, 500 tons daily. They are now employing over 500 men, and Sand Coulee is a bustling young town of about 1,500 people. The best feature of this is that almost all the money goes into circulation right here, the Great Falls merchants doing a large trade with Sand Coulee.
 Another thing which makes coal cheap Is the fact that the railroad is down grade all the way from the mines and the locomotives can haul pretty big loads. One of your readers was out here in September and we saw long train of coal coming into town, ,and we stopped to count the cars. I SUD- posed there would be about forty or perhaps fifty, but when we had count ed as many as that and did not see the caboose come around the curve l was as much surprised as he. There were seventy cars of coal, four cars of lime stone and the caboose, with one ordi nary freight engine, and they were not the little vest-pocket cars that are seen on the Pennsylvania coal roads either. Not one of them carried less than twen- ty tons. These cars are built especially for this coal and ore traffic and run be- tween here and the mines. A week ago Friday one mogul engine brought in one hundred and six of these big fell lows in one trainl
 At Belt, about five miles beyond Sand Coulee, there have been some coal mines worked to a small extent for a number of years. Several of these have been bought up by people inter ested in the big Anaconda Copper Go. this year, and, after good deal of pre- liminary prospecting, they have put on force of men and are turning out a good deal of coal for the Anaconda works, just how much I am unable to say, but know they had contract last fall to send 300 tons daily to those works and I hear that they have increas- ed their force lately.
 This much for what has been done this hard year with copper and coal. Now to look at some of the other things that have been done. The most impor- tant new industry we have obtained is the mill and elevator of the Royal Mill ing Co.,, which is an offshoot of the Washburn-Crosby company of Min nea noIia which ia so wall known that