Arizona republican., 1914-05-17

in 1905, says that natives along the rivers of Northern Africa washed gold sands in wooden bowls, then melted the dust in clay crucible without using fluX. In parts of Chi na today-and China is a great ore producing nation - We find very crude mining methods. The cruci- bles, for instance, hold only a pound and a half
 The first American mining was carried on fully a thousand years ago by the mound dWellers They operated chiefly in the Lake Superior copper country. Excavations have revealed that they came in boats by thousands in the spring and left in the fall, landing at the mouth of Portage Lake If 50,000 of them worked every year, it must have taken them 300 years to make some of their excavations. Their pits ex- tend ninety miles and more from Ontonagon to the tip of Keweenaw peninsula. Twenty carloads of stone mining tools were found in one small district on Isle Royale These mound builders left no evidences of ever having had chisels They broke their ore off in chunks by hammer blows, carrying it out in skin bags Later on, they used the fire-setting method, throwing water on the rocks after heating them with great fires. They worked the copper into earrings, bracelets and war imple- ments. Their method was to gather the metal in as pure state as possi- ble, melt it, spread it in sheets and smooth it with stones. The Indians who followed the mound builders had no traditions about them to hand down, though Hudson in 1909 found Indians smoking copper pipes with earthen bowls. White men be- gan mining copper in the Lake Su- perior country in 1S43 at Misery Bay a company of Boston men organ ized in Detroit It was a hard life in 1851 supplies failed to arrive, and the miners, becoming too weak to work, the mines closed down.
 In California, shaft 210 feet deep some time ago was discovered, with the skeleton of a primitive man at the bottom beneath the debris. and the mine had been worked SC thoroughly that there was nothing left to be taken out in the way of ere. The mining business has the United States to thank for many of it's best steps forward The first percussion drill ever made was pat ented in 1S49 by J. J. Couch, of Philadelphia
 Colladon proposed the use of q compressed air drill as early as 1852: within ten years, it was in almost general use. After power drills, the next important step in the develop ment of mining methods was the in troduction of high explosives.
 Gunpowder had solved the orc mining problem few hundred years before. Nitroglycerin, discovered in 1S47 by A. Sobero, was first applied to blasting by Nobel in 1863; it's ini- tial big job was the Hoosac tunnel. In 1868, Nobel introduced dynamite. Power drills and high explosives have completely revolutionized min ing. Pumping and hoisting machin- cry already were near perfection. Wire rope haulage was a wonder at one time: then came pneumatic and electric hauIage.
 Inventors were hard at work in the early fifties on coal-cutting ma chimes. Harrison pioneered the pick machine and Lechner came along with a cutter-bar machine The ear Her types were operated by com pressed air. Electricity was applied in 1889. The name of the inventor of hydraulic mining is lost but the date is fixed at about 1853. Pro- bably no one could claim the honor as it was just an application of one form of natural erosion.
 The anti-debris laws of 1882 lim- ited this work The first pudding furnace in the United States was put up at Plumsock. Pa, near Councils vile, in 1877. This mill was wreck ed by flood and the remaining ma chinery was then moved to Browns vile
 About 1910. Isaac Pennock built a rolling mill near Coatesville, Pa, al this mill (then called a "slittine milr) and the first boiler plate was rolled in this country
 And so we come down to the days of scientific management in mines and the use of moving pictures as education against accidents Mining is gigantic industry-in the United States alone it directly employs sev- eral million men and has a yearly output worth at least two billior dollars
 One feature of the business must not be overlOoked-the faker Agri- cola's book, published in 1856 anC previously referred to, tells of the appearance of that great character of superstition-the man who claims to be able to locate ore by means o1 a witch hazel divining rod