Custer weekly chronicle. [volume] (Custer City, S.D.) 1890-1931, 1909-01-16
FOR EXPERIMENTAL
TESTING OF ORES.

legislature, bill to provide for the es
tablishment of an experimental station
devoted to devising and perfectini
methods and processes for the reduc
jtion of the refractory ores of the Black
Hills
At the request of persons interested
in the proposed legislation, DR.. A. T.
Roos of DeaGwood, has prepared the
following comprehensive paper, which
deals with the necessity for such an in-
stitution and embodies the important
details of this public enterprise
THE NECESSITY OF SYSTEMATIC AND ExTES-
sIvE EXPERIMENTAL WORK ON THE Low
GRADE ORES OF THE BLACK HILLS.
The results obtained in the past ten
years at the experimental stations in
conjunction with university laboratories
or at independent agricultural stations
Impressed upon me the value of such
work.
We have in the Black Hills problem
Of monumental importance, which up to
the present time has baffied the chem
lists and metallurgists of this district,
namely the treatment of the refractory
so-called blue ores by any other process
than smelling
1t will be my object to demonstrate in
this paper the possibility Of solving this
perplexing question with the financial
aid of the state legislature, and at the
same time proving the necessity of a
permanent mining experimental station
at some point in the Black Hills district,
to be designated by the governor, in the
vicinity of the mines, facilitating the
personal supervision of samples to be ia
ken for experimental work and conven-
lent to the narrow guage system of the
Black Hills.
Recent investigations have demon
strated that there are vast resources of
low grade ores between SO and IS in
value, both in the Bald Mountain and
Maitland districts. These ores only
yield to the present cyanide treatment
between 40 and go per cent of their gold
values, representing total loss of over
one-third Of the values contained in the
ore. AS a consequence the mining COM
panies developing these mineral depos-
its were forced to leave these ores un-
touched until method can he worked
out giving better results than those men
toned.
Not alone the mining companies have
been handicapped but particularly the
small owner and the prospector who
did not have the courage to develop
ore bodies that he could not dispose
Of
Smelling of these ores is out of all
question, as the lowest possible smelling
charges under the most favorable cir
cumstances, are $3.50 per ton, adding to
this 81 for mining and so cts. for ship
ping, and considering that the smeter
is only willing to pay $l9 per ounce for
gold or 92 per cent of the actual value,
the producer of ton of ore containing
IS in gold would only receive $4.60,
whereas, his expenses would be So. AS
a business proposition therefore, smelt-
ing of this grade of ore would be highly
Improbable.
The unanimous opinion Of the best
posted mining men of this district is
that, although bodies of ore containing
$500 or more are encountered, the val
ues, as general rule, run below this
figure, which might be considered as a
safe minimum for smelling. We are
therefore, in this district, forced to ac-
knowledge the necessity of getting re-
suits by improving our present meth
ods of treating low grade ores in part
cular by the cyanide or some other pro-
cess.
It may be said that the large compa-
MES have their own chemists and that
they should have no need of outside
help. This, however, would be barely
a partial truth.
1t is true that the largest company in
the Hills has research chemists and the
success of that organization, especially
in the last six years, rests largely on the,
service of such men. But there are
scarcely any such men employed by the
smaller companies, who wholly free
from executive responsibility and rou-
tine work, can give themselves complete
ly to research work, which, however,
important it may be, will require some
two years of earnest labor to obtain ade-
quate results, and granting that there
are such men, how about library facili-
ties2 1t is we'll known how necessary
such facilities are for research work of
large order, and finally, how about lab
oratory facilities2 Of course most of
the companies have good assay Office
equipment. The great majority though
are not equipped for experimental work
on large scale. Then again, many of
those men of good technical and scien,i-
&c training, who are employed in the
mills, are, by the very fact of that en-
ployment, incapable of solving its prob
lem. They are kept busy between mill
and executive duties, or are taken from
their experimental work to represent
their company in some business matter
of apparently greater temporary impor-
tance.
One company in this district, the
Homestake Mining company, with its
enormous financial resources, has large
ly solved the problem of the treatment
of their ores, due to the very fact that
the company is financially in a position