The Saint Paul globe. (St. Paul, Minn.) 1896-1905, 1899-10-09
BIG CALIFORNIA Nine
THE GREATEST PRODUCER OF MIN
ERAL WEALTH IN THE
r. GOLDEN STATE
IT rs LOCATED AT KESWICK

IT IS LOCATED AT KEsWICK
Bought by an English Syndicate for
100000, and Will This Year Pay
a Clear Profit of SI,OOO,OOO-Cop-
per Ledge $50 Feet Thick-The
Mine Has Only Been Worked
Three Years.
There Is steep, mountainous inhospi-
table-looklng district up in Shasta county,
known vaguely to the outside world as
Keswick, says the San Francisco Chroni-
Gle 1t is veritable mint to big Eng
lish concern, and yet the public knows
so little about the great copper mine
there that people have not even learned
that Keswick is pronounced with the
W." From the English flag above its
conspicuously elevated club house to the
emphatic national characteristics Of its
imported chiefs Of departments this ex-
elusive mining preserve, isolated in the
| natural seclusion of tortuous hidden ra-
vines Is a British enterprise and almost
as strange a community for California
as that seen by Rip Van Wrinkle In the
Adirondacks before he took his long
sleep.
Think of a piece of mountainside that
Americans would not venture to put
| money into and that now in its fourth
year of development by London corpo-
ration, is the richest mining investment
in California. Englishmen paid $500, 900
for the property and expended nearly
$20OO,OO0 In equipping and preparing for
operations. The second year they real
lied net profit of some s315,OO and last
year the profits increased PSI per cent,
and the clear gain above all expenses was
$685. 900. This year 1t will be still greater,
probably more than 100000. The ledge
is $50 feet thick and there Is said to be
ore In sight now to keep the mine run
ming for thirty years. Dividends of ~
per cent, amounting to $4,000, were paid
last year, and $345, 900 more was set aside
from the profits as a reserve fund with
which to make part of the improvements
and additions necessary to keep pace with
the increasing output from the mine.
These are the sort of facts that might
well make American capital wake up
with the impression that it has been a
Rip Van Wrinkle in Its own mountains,
while the outside world has had It's eyes
open.
For some years the original owners of
this remarkable property Scratched at the
top of the deposit and thought they had
a. gold mine. 1t was once offered to q
Siskiyou county miner for $1,000 and re-
fused. Later they sold out for $50, OOO
In time the mine changed hands again
and brought $4,000. The buyers soon
tired Of the mountain and tried to work 1t
off on anybody that would take it. Final
ly they interested the Englishmen, and
the sale was made for 100000 1t was
generally thought that the Britishers had
bought a gold brick. That was the way
home capital viewed the sale. But it is
having the mist wiped from it's specta-
Giles.
Eleven hundred and ninety men are
employed near Keswick in the mine and
at the smelter. Their pay roll means
the monthly distribution of more than
$4,000 in cash, a considerable part of
Which naturally is spent in Shasta coun-
ty, principally in the town of Redding,
six miles from the smelters and twelve
from the mine In addition to giving
employment to all these men and increas-
ing the commercial revenues Of local
storekeepers, this foreign corporation is
directly responsible for the operation Of
a large number of loW-grade collaborating
quartz mines all over the neighboring
country The quartz is needed in the
shelters as f1ux in treating the Iron
Mountain sulphide ores and in considera-
ton Of its delivery and use the small
owners get the few dollars of gold in
each ton of rock that before they could
not afford to handle.
The great coppine mine thrusts its blu
ish, earthy-looking ore from tunnel in
the precip1tous, hOneycOmbed side of
the mountain summit, and it goes slid
ing down for ten miles in cars on the
crookedest and most snake-like railroad
in the West and is dumped close to the
| snlelters. Then it is piled over wood
kilns in long rows as high as mans
head and sometimes a quarter of mile
| long, close beside the track, and roasted
| for sixty days, while it sends UP unceas-
! ingly sickly, haZy smoke, and leaves a
thick yellow deposit Of sulphur smeared
along the top of the heaps. That is but
| one feature Of the process.
| The smelter is the glutton that devours
| the ore and seemingly becomes sickened
| with the nauseous diet and belches vile
| vapors from a dozen towering nostrils.
| What is life to the smelter and to The
| finances of the corporation is dreary
| death to eI cry bit of vegetation for a
] mile around that surface inferno. Sui
phurous fumes belched from tall chin
| neys form a thin cloud that hangs ON
| incusly in midair as a pail that would
| hide from the sun the desolation, the
i naked hillsides and the miserably blight
| ed and blackened and shriVeled leal1eSS
bushes and scrub pine that were once
part of the fresh green hillside carpet
ing.
| Where wild nature miserably and 81
| lently perishes, $50 men exist and toll
| day and eight in SWeltering heat, those
! in the most dangerous places going about
| like road agents with bandanas tied over
the lower part of their faces to protect
them from the first violence Of the sitting
gases that make them cough and choke
as they bend to their work. Only in
rarest weather, when there is a stiff
breeze, does the haze dispense sufficient
ly to permit a photograph of the works.
Normally things appear as seen
through yellow goggles, and the sun
goes over looking pale and unnatural,
| as beyond a smoked glass. And the men
that slave in this artificial purgatory
are not Englishmen, neither are they
| Americans They are the f1otsam and
| jetsam of many nations and the worst
that drift with the worlds human sew
age They are so helplessly cosmo-
politan that intending agitators who
| conceive q strike cannot carry 1t out
because of the difficulty met in trying
| to persuade the foreign speaking igno-
ramuses what is wanted So, in turn,
| the dissenters despairing, give up their
efforts to convince the congress of ma
lions and simply go over to the rolling
plateau, half a mile away, and con-
colo thnp in horf IN