The indicator., 1897-10-09
MODERN MerALLuRoY.
There Have Be-n Many Failures hut
Steady Advance

Thsfs Have Been Many Failures hut n
Steady Advance.
Ihe process man is always with us.
with each recurring period of ten or II
dozen years, he bobs up serenely with
a new and revolutionary something to
which his predecessors gave laborious
Dirth, maybe u dozen. II hundred or five
hundred years ago. He always Is pro-
inc win new desulplurzers. Some
thirty odd years ago Colorado wns
overrun with his kind. and we never
saw one of his inventions which had
not preceding brother in some pnst
age. once only did we find one which
we could not discover described in
some oid and maybe forgotten metal
iurgicnl record. That was a furnace
puiit by MIR. n. \. Willard, in Boulder
county, tweniy-one years ago. Glad of
something new under the sun in that
line we wrote n full description of it.
Three months afterwards came a let
ter from Sweden telling of other roast
ing experiments and furnaces exactly
ike Mr.. Wizards. which had long be
fore been tried and abandoned in that
land OF the midnight sun. But it does
nor follow because certain kinds of fur
haces have been tried and abandoned
as failures. that they may not. under
other conditions and with better skill,
be successful. In fact. almost every
successful thing has been n failure
somewhere and sometime.
Notwithstanding many of the expert
ments look puerilc and may be foolish,
they are not without some general ben
eft. AT least someone learns some
thlnR, ana the sum total of human
knowledge is increased, which is Il
thing not to he despiscd in itself. But
as MIR. Weller remarked about having.
with great effort. learned the alphabet,
1t Is questionable whether it is worth
while going through so much TO learn
so little. Al least the man who pays the
bills In most cases will appreciate the
Weller remark more than he will that
other chunk of wisdom about the sum
total of knowledge.
There are n few facts which NIGH
well be called fundamental. that lie II;
the basis of the improvements in metal
lurgy. They are that all ore must bt
crushed to various degrees of tincncss
the degree depending upon the spccin
ore and the kind of process 10 bc used
3eforc the metal can be extracted. This
is true ns to every method of trcatmcn
known except smelling. Second. in ev
cry kind of ore known. which is treated
other than by smelling, where the met
ais can not be extracted by either anal
gamation of cynnidation. the ore must
be roasted. The object of roasting is
to change the chemical combinations
into other combinations. which render
the metals iractible 10 some one of the
many kinds of treatment. This crushing
and roasting are the two greatest clc-
to of In s,S -
qucntly it is not to be wondered ~ tlat
Efforts should he made to cheaper them.
These efforts are coinmendnblc. These
efforts are bearing fruit every year. as
witnessed by the Brown Horseshoe.
Pearce Turret, Iopp, and other known
Improvements in furnaces. which are
modern in their perfection though per
haps old in conception. They are n part
of the sum of human knowledge, They
are the Shadrach. Mcshach and
Abcdnegoes who have passed through
The fiery ordeal and come out %. Is.
They are the plus sign To the world nj
large, though to the many who sircwcd
with wrecks the road reaching to an
tiquity, leading up TO and making them
possible. there was only II minus sign
TO tell of the hopes and dollars that
vanished forever So II always proba-
bly, will he. Measured by tile world
standard of golden profits, failures will
be more abundant than successes.
Somehow an all-wise providence failed
miscrably in fixing Ihincs mp as we
would like to have them, where til plus
sign would be more abundant tlnn
minus, wisdom than folly. knowledge
than ignorance. and where we would
all have more fun than trouble-Miin-
Ing Industry.