Valdez daily prospector., 1915-05-08
DEPARTMENT NEEDS
 A MINING ENGINEER.

A good mining engineer out of a
 job might find an opening in the
 Treasury Department. At least there seems to be need of mining guide for some of it's officials. A recent incident will suffice, without going into the Gold Hill Consolidated case, which became the subject of sen atorial investigation" last year ow- ing to the sending of a Treasury en- ploye to the Gold Hill mine and the use of senatorial stationery by Walter George Newman, it's promoter. When
 it comes to real mine, with mil lions of tons of developed ore and technical direction of the highest sort, Comptroller of the Currency John Skelton Williams has consigned it to the wildcat list, without turn
 ing a hair or sending a Treasury em- ploye to investigate. In his haste
 to reply to charges by the Riggs National Bank of Washington of un
 fair discrimination the Comptroller of the Currency objected to some of the collateral which the bank accept ed, and has listed as alleged wildcat stock the shares of the Inspiration Consolidated Copper Go.
 Listing as wildcat one of the biS copper mines of the world, in which about $12,OO0,O0O has been invested in plant, and sending a Treasury employe to one of the oldest and mos. obstreperous of mining wildcats pro''- ably represent simply difference in the personal point of view; but we should not care to be under the don.- inance of that personal point of view and hence are inclined to sympathize with the officials of the Riggs bank
 A good many persons besides the Comptroller of the Currency have not yet awakened to the class of mining investments that we now have in such mines as the porphyry coppers, such gold mines as those of Lead, s. D., Treadwell Island and Juneau, Alaska, and the Witwatersrand, and perhaps some deposits of mixed sul- phide ores. Such mines have been developed to produce individually at the rate of millions of tons of ore per annum, have had millions of money expended on their plants, have proved ore reserves sufficient to maidtain their production for ten,
 twenty, or even fifty years, and are
 reckoned as liquidating enterprises upon the basis of their assured life. The accuracy of the estimates has
 been absolutely proved in principle, and in individual cases has been checked and rechecked by independ- ent engineers. More than that, divi- dends to the amount of millions and millions of money are being paid an- nually. In the case of the copper mines the investor is subject only to Iuo FlClSSlluueS Ol Luc ludlhSI 1ol Sop- per- and even respecting that he takes no chance if he figures on a reason able average. In the case of the gold mines even that chance is absent
 The investor who puts his money
 in such mine knows that he is putting it in property that cannot vanish over night. Panics may come, but his property is unharmed. New
 York City real estate that is in a
 prosperous quarter today may be worth but one-tenth as much few years hence owing to a change in the course of trade. Standard railways
 may run down, like the Neww Haven.
 But an ore body of 100,000,000 tons
 is a solid thing. Let the Comptrol.
 Ter of the Currency take notice.-The En pinoarinp 6 Mininp Journal