Phoenix weekly herald., 1898-01-27
WILL DEVELOP MINES.
Can Work Low-Grade OresAHis Won
derful Machines Take the Place
@ of Miners. ss-a 'i'i'-


of Miners. st --t.i'''-
In an interview with Thomas A.
Edison the wizard is quoted as fol
lows: s M -4.,
Il do not believe that there is a sin
gle known gold mine in the United
States abandoned or worked that L
cannot operate at profit l am sure
that l can by a new process which |
have invented profitably mine ore
which contains as little as S1.25 worth
of gold to the ton and 1 prefer low
to high grade ores 1..
After six years of the hardest kind
of work through the constant sacrifice
of personal comfort and the venture
of Il vast fortune, another great tri-
umph has just been placed to Wizard
Edison'S credit-a triumph over OBJ
stacles supposed by experts to be in
surmountable. 1... .-...-.,,.
This achievement is the invention of
n process of iron mining by which he
is utilizing a grade of ore so low that
it has heretofore been considered alb
solutely useless. BY the use of ma
chinery which he has invented, and on
which he holds patents, he is going to
make many dollars out of material
which no other manufacturer could af-
ford to even consider His process has
been proved to be a success. and his
assistant is responsible for the state
ment that Mr.. Edison lis going to
make more money out of this than he
ever made or will make out of his
other inventions. and that means a
great deal when it is considered that
out OF his other inventions the wizard
has made enough SO that he could af
ford to risk more than S2,000,OO0 on
his iron mining venture before getting
a dollar in return.
He is now preparing to go into the
gold mining business on a large scale,
and contemplation of the wizards past
works make it certain that a new era
of gold mining will be inaugurated
with his adv. Mt into the field. When
he declares: Il do not believe that
there is single gold mine in the Unit
ed States, abandoned or worked, that
| cannot operate at a profit it means
much.
This is not a new idea of mine, said
Mr.. Edison, to a correspondent who
visited him at Edison, \. J., for
have been experimenting with gold
ores on and off since 1879: but have
refrained from speaking for publica
ton on the subject because L had not
until very recently got my process per
fected to point where l felt sure of
my way. -.i .sl4Ie -.4a-.. s.,
I'm mining gold shall employ sub
the same process that l am
now using for mining iron. When
speak of mining it is not in the sense
that the term is generally used. The
day of the old fashioned miner-the
man who digs the ground with a pick
is past so far as am concerned l
have no use for him. My mining is all
done by machinery, and it does the |
work after Il fashion that is practical |
ly automatic, too. Not a man touches |
a piece of iron ore that we are taking |
out of the ground here: nor does IL |
man touch even the finished product, |
the briquettes of iron. unless by acct |
dent, after they are dumped into cars |
for shipment. Not a human hand |
either the ore or the briquettes |
at any stage of the process. |
when we run at full capacity about |
5000 tons a day, the entire force in all !
of our works will not. eX |
coed $50 men. That means, of course, |
that our automatic machinery takes |
the place of several thousand men |
The men We employ are not miners; |
they are machiniSts, engineers and |
aborerS and their work is simply to |
start the machinery. to watch it while |
it works and to make repairs. 1t mas |
got to be SO to mine lOw=grade ore like |
ours, which, yields only about % per |
cent iron. and sell the product at the |
ow prices quoted now. 1t could nov |
possibly pay if manual labor We're en-
)loyed. .s-.. |
Il take little stock from my point of |
view in KIondike or any other place |
where men pick up surface gold The |
great profits on gold mining in the |
future are to come from these big low |
.rade deposits near at hand. |
LAS | said. L would not think of set !
ing up big plant to work an ordinary
elm Even a belt 100 feet wide, forty |
eet deep and a half mile long would |
lot pay to dig. What L want are de /
DOsis about 10000 feet long and about /
800 feet wide. with a little gold scat
cred all through them" -t-.-..--- 81 |