The Wallace miner. [volume] (Wallace, Idaho) 1907-current, 1915-10-14

ones when l try, and l wouldn't come
down over that bluff in the sleet again
for a million dollars. And don't
think II is the kind of property my cli-
ent wants anyhow and have protected
him from a possible bad investment,
and my conscience is clear. And were
my client to see 1t, he would probably
agree with me.
And then my mind runs back to
old Man Aldrich, Johnny Cone, Otto
Abeling, Pap Brenegan--I can see him
now with his fat tummy sticking out
over the place where the saddle-horn,
which he had knocked off with an axe,
should have been Bill Springer on
saddle horse leading his pack-pony,
Jim O'Brlen and others, trailing
around through the hills looking for,
not forninst, mines Their work, at
least some of them, may have lacked
precision of thought and expression
demanded now, and they would have
turned a modern flow sheet upside
down perhaps, to see what the picture
was all about. But among them they
found properties that eventually made
mines Some big and some small, but
which warranted the confidence placed
in them by their hackers and MADE
and lost them money.
| had occasion the other day to turn
in what like to call "a report There
were more pages Of 1t than there are
letter | said For your
purposes-referring to the character
istics of the addressed would make
this In about nine lines" Perhaps you
remember the Gashweiler report. eve
do.-Editor)
Now the kernel in this nut, II There
be one, as 1t refers to the Amateur
Miner not wanting to become a mln-
GRITTY stakeholder in large company.
but wanting to mine. is this. In the
trend of conditions toward big things,
as specially examplified in a mining
way by such properties as Utah Cop
Iper, Chuquicamata, Interstate Gala
han, Alaska Gold, with their ability to
install refinements Of technical oper-
alton with resultant economies, are We
not altogether losing sight Of the op-
iportunities for the sensible placing of
money and endeavor in smaller pro
perties, where they will make an ade-
quate return and help to make pros
porous little communities. as against
big ones? Are we not minimizing the
desirability of small undertakings /!
Are we not perhaps keeping Amateur
/ Miner and lot of men of courage and
enterprise, coupled with only small Or
moderate means, from miningT they
get technicallzed and engineered and
lprocessed into the Willies, with The
idea that mining, floats on some kind
OF nimbus beyond the reach Of COM
mon mortals.
The country where you see one and
four and a dozen jacks poking down
to the railroad once or twice week
or day, with sack Of ore on each side,
or the country where an arrastra on
the creek evolves into 5-stamp mill,
where they do pretty bad milling, and
there is another one plugging away
over on the ridge with fig trees in the
yard by the house, looks just as good
to me as does the plant that speaks in
terms of thousands of tons, and
where, If you are a married man and
get a job there you move the Missus
and the kids into shack 46, between
ole Halvorsen and his good woman,
in AZ, and Mcguire and Blonde An
ME. in As.
| Up the creek we've got the Little
Tinker. Sometimes six inches, some
times three feet of real ore. Would |
ask the p. d. & Co. or the A. c. M. Co.,
or the A. s. & r. to send an engineer
to examine 1t? No. But where is
Pap Brenegan-peace be-? To blow
in out of nowhere and bound any
where, to stay over night with you
and swap old lies. To go up in the
morning and look it over. Eye should
sink from de ind av de drift, an
punch hole in de hanging! Maybe
tbs not de wall. An how do you say
she runs? She do? Any ixciss of
iron? What's your freight an treat
ment rates? Goold an silver values
pretty rigular?"
You sit down on the dump and
talk of various things and look at the
blue haze gather over the hills across
the canyon. Say" says Pap, 81 know
four or five FELIX'S that have lease on
"a block of ground in the Portland at
Cripple Creek. Maybe dey would look
lat yer hole here. An Mr.. Amateur
Miner from Bridgeport, Conn, l met
him on the train goin' in to Salt Lake
last fall. He says he has frinds that
make brass and money, and he writes
me that they will look at small lay
out. Ye can not till. maybe twin be
like Moorphy's wife"
You made a deal Some time later,
in boiled four roughnecks from Grip
pie Greek with steel and powder, tent
and grub. and started to shoot the bot
tom out Of the Little Tinker. and the
bottom-may be-stayed in, and they
are still looking for 1t. II has proved
nothing big, but II has made livings,
paid wages, helped develop other pros
nectS pnod had and indifParant ond