The Colfax chronicle. [volume] (Colfax, Grant Parish, La.) 1877-1981, 1896-05-09
NOT so BADLY OFF. :
u Silver State That II Doing Very Well
as II II.

rs 1t II.
You might naturally think, from the
talk you hear about the hotels in Mon
tana, that the state is pretty nearly
ruined by the refusal of congress to
buy silver at l29 cents an ounce, when
1t is worth only 60 cents in the markets
of the world, and coin it into legal
tender dollars. Nearly every man you
meet tells you that times are terribly
hard, and that the only remedy is the
free coinage of silver. You will con-
clude that the silver mining industry
must be in a very bad way. Take no
mans word for this, however, but drop
into the Office of Capt. Mills, the state
commissioner, who collects the statis-
tics, and ask him to give you the figures
Tor the production of precious metals
in Montana for 1895. You will learn
that Montana produced in that year
$22,sSd,G92 worth of silver, and that
this total has only once been exceeded
u. the history of the state. Two of the
big silver mines, the Granite Mountain
and the Bi-Metallic, are shut down, but
number of small mines have been
opened of late and are making money.
You will conclude that silver mining is
by no means PROSTATE industry here
On the contrary, it is very much alive.
During 1895 Montana produced of gold,
S4,ae1 ,040; of copper, s21,114,s69; of
lead, S754,359. The total metal yield
aggregated in money value, according
to Capt. Mills statistics, s49,0s3, Eel.
Add to this about s12, OOo, 900 for the
range cattle shipments, about 81, SOC, 900
for wool and sheep shipped east, about
Sa,0O0,000 for coal mined, and then esti-
mate the value of the farm products of
the rich valleys, and you reach a sur
pyising total of actual wealth produced
al a single year by population of only
100000 souls.
lou will very naturally suppose that
che wages of labor employed in mines
have been greatly reduced since the de-
cline in silver began, but here you are
mistaken. The old rate of $3.50 day
is everywhere firmly maintained in the
mines. The product has declined in
value one-half, but the men who take
out the ore get just as much as ever.
With his $3.50 miner can buy more of
the main necessaries of living than he
could with IS ten years ago. Yet the
mine owners are able to pay these high
wages and to make a fair profit. How
many industries east of the Rocky
mountains could now live if they had to
pay the same wages they paid in the old
Hush times? No reduction of wages
and the highest output of any year ex-
sept one are facts that tell the story of
the condition of silver mining in Mon
tana, and make grotesque the current
talk about the ruin of the chief industry
of the state.
II you present these statistics to the
free silver men who talk with you in
the hotels and on the trains they will
call you a goldbug and win suspect
that you are On emissary from Wall
street, but they are all good fellows
and you need not quarrel with them.
A little chat and perhaps a cocktail or
two will bring from them the statement
that much of the silver produced in
Montana is a by-product of the great
copper mines and that the rest is from
exceptionally good mines. 'Now," they
will say, ''if we had free coinage at
Is to 1, hundreds of poor veins would
be opened that cannot now be worked
at all, many more laborers would be en-
ployed, the towns would grow, the mcr-
chants would prosper and everybody
would make money" You reply that
it would also be a fine thing for the
wheat country, where you live, If con-
gress would buy all the wheat at dol
lar bushel, and a fine thing for the
iron country if congress would pay
$40 ton for the iron ore. Then your
friends begin on the "crime of 1879"
and repeat familiar phrases from
Coins Financial School," and if you
are wise you will suggest another drink
and switch the conversation off on the
opportunities for immigration and the
investment of capital now afforded by
Montana.-E. V. Smalley, in Chicago