Mohave County miner., 1901-05-18
The Infancy of Mining.


OF the great truth that the mining in.
dustry is in its infancy. Solomon. in
all his glory, gazing with rapture upon
the gilded minerets of his splendid
temple, never dreamed of the fact that
the mines of Ophir were wild cat
speculation compared to the revela-
tions of wealth that would punctuate
the future with EXPLANATIONS of won
der and surprise. The we'll -heeled
Inca of ancient Peru piled high the
product of his Klondykes to tempt the
brain of PizZaro into the termination
of a gorgeous impulse, and doubtless
felt within his copper colored heart
that he had gotten the mining business
down to fine point without the eva
hide process. Like Solomon he did
not live long enough TO learn that time
must shuttle off few desultory cen.
turtles before the mining industry
would be even in its infancy. The
same may be said of the extravagant
old gentleman who formerly managed
the affairs of Persia, Egypt, Greece
and Rome, who had money to throw at
the birds in their day aud generation,
aud whose prospectors we're the first
to start the story about the Lost Cabin
mine, which has been discovered reg
ularly every year since Cleopatra
/ ruined Mark Antony with a wildcat
/ deal The wisest of the ancient5 left
no records to show that they antici
/ pated a future greater than the present
in which they lived, and apparently
! the idea never occurred to the most
/ farsighted that the mining industry
would not acquire its infancy until
the latter part of the nineteenth cen.
fury in the modern measurement of
time. Such, however, is the solemn
/ truth.
While mining has always been car.
ried on, originally by the heathen5 and
later by the chosen of God, it was
never conducted along the lines that
meant the actual and absolute extrac-
ton Of ores from a mineral field, and
therefore could not be dignified as a
matured industry II is now merely
in its infancy, instead of in its long
chrysallis condition, because modern
scientific principles have broken its
shell. Ways and means have been dis.
covered whereby gold can be recovered
from any chemical condition in which
/ it may be found and usually with a
margin of profit; excepting, of course,
the large amount of juicy wealth that
is said to be secreted within the waters
of the vastly deep. The chemical pro-
cesses already discovered irresistably
lead to the conclusion that no form of
the precious metal will long escape
the greedy fingers of man. Thus it
happens that no mineral fields of the
past, operated by crude and unscien-
/ ttic methods, can be said to have been
exhausted In short, conditions are
now such that all the discoverable
gold locked up in the treasures of
| Mother Earth is in fair way for seiZ-
/ next century unless, indeed, the art of
creating that metal reaches a point
that makes its possession less desir.
able to mankind, and the selflshness
of the world takes on another form.
/ The age of invention has locked arms
with chemistry in introducing the in
/ fancy of the mining industry, and ma
cuinery is playing a part of wonderful
proportions. There is not a known
gold field in the world today that does
not claim infancy in development; and
! the same is true as to other metals,
subject to the conditions of the mar
kets. In the light of modern progress
the era of worked-out mineral zone
seems an absurdity. Like the tin
mines of Cornwall, England, which
have increased their product for thou
sands of years-like the copper mines
of Michigan, which are so deep that
the Chinese authorities on the other
side of their shafts are likely to raise
the question of territorial right-the
quartz of the western American miner
al fields give infinite promise of dura-
bility and wealth, and the infancy of
mining bids fair to develop into
splendid maturity that will give to the
world commercial momentum never
dreamed of in the golden eras of the
past.-Western Mining World.