The Salt Lake herald. [volume] (Salt Lake City [Utah]) 1870-1909, 1907-12-26
TREATMENT OF
SILICIOUS ORE
Talk of Starting SHELTERS at
Reno or Elsewhere for That
Purpose Is Ridiculous.

Talk of starting new smelters at Reno
and elsewhere has been provoked by the
difficulty in getting prompt settlements
from the shelters. but such talk is not
to be taken seriously, says Mining and
Scientific Press.
The 300 tons of high-grade silicious ore
available daily from the Goldfield mines
would form an inadequate basis for any
smelling operations, and while the copper
ores occurring in the same region might
be used in making a suitable mixture
this would not hasten realization on the
silicious output, for the matte TO be
formed would have to be first converted
and then refined, and this would be &C
complished with no greater CELEBRITY by
one smelling establishment than by an
other.
Eventually we hope to see the Tonopah
and GOldfield districts united by rail
to Ely, and then the big plant of the
Nevada Consolidated in the Steptoe val
ley would furnish a market for silicious
material to be mixed with the pyritic ore
of Ely. OF course. the wild statements
as to an attempt on the part of the Gug-
genheims or their associates to get con-
troll of the gold mines in Nevada by re-
fusing smelter facilities and thereby de-
pressing stock quotations are hardly
worth notice. We hold no brief for them,
but il is fairly obvious that they have
bitten as much as they can comfortably
assimilate and no group is less likely to
be buying mines at this time.
AS matter of fact, at the back of the
talk about a disOrganized ore market
there is the recognition of a necessity for
improving labor conditions. which, at
Goldfield, have been out of hand for a
long time. Furthermore, the lessees have
left some of the mine workings in bad Dr.
der and a little interval permitting of re
timbering and other repairs will be well
coined by the managers. In the mean
while the differences between the mine
owners and the Western Federation of
Miners have reached an acute stage. and
we hope that it will be adjusted in such
way as to prevent any further Interior
ence on the part of aVOWed anarchists
with the progress of an important indus
try. Unions we shall have, and they
but lawless organizations of either labor
or capital ought not to be able to persist.
But this problem of treating high-grade
SiliciOus ores will solve itself In every
VelOpment of individual mines leads to a
lowering of the assay value of the aver
age output Cripple Creek and Kalgoor-
lie. the two great goldfields of the last
decade, were high-grade camps during
their early years. Cripple Greek shipped
its rich siliciOus material to the Denver
and Pueblo smelters, while at Kalgoorlie
the mills extracted the gold at a cost not
a bit less than the usual smelter rate. In
the course of time some of the high-grade
ore bodies were exhausted and the out
put became less rich, per ton. simply oe-
cause general cheapening of operations
enabled the managers to exploit ore
bodies formerly Improbable, and to mix
the poorer stuff with what remained of
the bonanzas As much profit was made
on medium grade ore as was made in the
early stages Of mining from the high
grade product. At Goldfield the bOnanZas
vet remain, in large part, but the STEADY
Improvement in methods of mining and
milling will gradually eliminate the
smelter problem. Cyanidation on the spot
will follow in the wake of smelling at a
distance. History repeats itself.