The Butte inter mountain. [volume] (Butte, Mont.) 1901-1912, 1901-12-06
Mines and Mining.

affinity for the chloride of gold. By
using it in the treatment he was able to
get out all the gold the ore contained.
1 then asked him what amount Of
chloride of gold he used. He replied.
about 200 milligrams to a pound Of ore.
l then told him that was all I wanted to
know, and walked out of the laboratory.
The manner in which he practiced the
deception was by weighing out in your
presence given number of miltigrams
of the chloride of gold and this you
would see him put into the crucible. The
flux he used in making the assay. how
ever. he would have charged with the
chloride. which enabled him to show any
increase he desired above the amount Of
the fire assay.
Told Them It Was a Fraud.
I wrote a letter to the New York par
ties and without going into details. told
them that the whole thing was fraud
from beginning to end; that their own
common sense would tell them it would
be impossible for THERE to be anything in
gold ore that chemical analysis would
not disclose, and that anyone who
claimed there was and tried to make
others believe it was a fraud. trying to
play on the credulity of the public for
the purpose of making money by a pre-
med!lated swindle.
From Washington I went to California.
thinking l had heard the last of the
Tichenor swindle. At the end of three
months I returned to New York and to
my surprise found that Tichenor had
succeeded in convincing my friends that
his process was all he claimed for it. and
that they had incorporated company
with a capital of $25, 100000 and had ap-
piled for a patent on the process. What
they claimed in their application for a
patent was SO unreasonab BILE the patent
office refused to grant a patent Sher-
man was at that time secretary of the
treasury and they applied to him to
have an investigation made.
Exhibits Gold Bricks.
l saved them all this trouble. The
thing which troubled them most was the
fear that when the great discovery be-
came generally known the value of gold
would depreciate. They determined to
keep the process secret as long as possi-
BILE, which would enable them to regulate
the output of gold. To this end they ap-
pointed a committee to call on me at the
st. James hotel. They informed me that
I had made a grave mistake in my re-
port on the Tichenor process. but they
wanted to give me one more chance to
change my report before it was too late.
They said they had demonstrated the
success of the process by working a num-
Der of tons of ore, and that if I would
come to the office they would show me
the gold bricks. They also stated that
in no instance did they get less than $500
per ton more than the fire assay showed.
1 went to their office the next morning.
where they opened the safe and showed
me a stack of gold bricks, ranging in
value from SO to $500. The weight and
fineness was stamped on each brick. and
they were all nearly pure gold. I saw at
a glance that these bricks had all been
made from the chloride of gold. I then
asked them how and where they made
the gold. They took me to their labora-
tory, which was located in a building on
John street. The outside of the building
looked very much like prison, and it
was only after considerable delay that we
were admitted. I there found the same
three "alchemists I had met in Wash
ington.
How the Work Was Done.
In the center of one of the rooms I
found a tank lined with porcelain, which
would hold about a ton of ore. 1t was
in this tank that the mixing was done.
They would first put the ore in the tank,