The Wallace miner. [volume] (Wallace, Idaho) 1907-current, 1916-01-27
German Copper Supply Far From Exhausted

/ wiring. And when, couple of days
ago, / put the copper problem to one
of the persons most intimately con-
cerned with the stretching of all Ger
many's resources, the answer was:
Our roofs. Take a city like Dres-
den. where so many of the roofs are
of copper. If we get hard up, we just
have to go down there and take the
roofs off a few Rathhauser (munici-
pal buildings) and we are saved" And
there are many roofs in Belgium and
in northern France which can also be
used, If need be, for the same purpose
Substitute for Copper.
It is said that the substitute for
copper has been found in a soft Steel
invented at the heart of Germany's
munition industry. the Krupp works
at Essen.
That it Is not expected that sub
stitute for copper will be needed for
long time to come, however, is suffi-
GENTLY proved by the fact that the
copper mines of Germany are not be-
ing worked nearly as intensively as
they might be, If the situation We're
considered serious. l visited the 9TH
err day the Rammelsberg mine in the
Harz mountains, which belongs to the
state / found that it has had it's
working force materially reduced since
the outbreak of the war, and that there
are only one and half shifts day,
of eight hours EACH The fact that, in
/ spite of this it now produces consid-
erably more than before the war is
ldue to a concentrating on the produc
ton of copper and cutting down ma
terially on the mining of lead, of
which, in peace times, 1000 tons were
annually produced from ores taken
from this mine.
A German Mining Town.
To speak of Goslar as a mining
town might give wrong impression,
since it reminds one of scene from
| "Meistersanger" or Faust" rather
than of the grimy streets of Butte, or
the abandoned shacks of Virginia City.
But the city has lived for thousand
years from the steady flow of metal
from this one mine; it's history has
largely consisted of battles between
rival mobiles for the possession of the
min ifc Rno o1d OF
churches were due less to a particu-
larly religious spirit in the town it
self than to the desire of the clergy to
make quite sure of receiving their full
1.-THE from the mine, by being on the
spot. In the middle ages 1t was one
of the most strongly fortified towns in
Germany, completely walled and de-
Tended by 1870 towers (of which three
are still standing) which could not
have been built but for the wealth
that the Rammelsberg mine brought |
into the Golfers of the city. And the
defense was carried on by mobiles who |
had made the city their residence in |
order to seize some of the precious
metals from the mine and-in a lit
eral sense-make money out of them
For the mine still turns out as much |
as rs kilos of gold and a hundred |
times that quantity of silver every
year.
The shoot of ore in this mine is wild
err than anywhere else in the world, is
extremely rich in copper, in some
cases yielding as much as % per cent |
metal. But 1t is a comparatively small
mine, employing, together with the
Oker smelteries, with which it is af-
filiated, only about 200 men. This is
far less than the Klausthal mine, in
the upper Harz, to say nothing of the
mine at Mansfield, the largest copper
mine in Germany, and the one at Els
leben in Halle, which also produces an
enormous quantity of zinc, and en-
ploys 10000 men.
The use of liquid air as an explo-
sive has been known ever since the
famous Professor Linde took out the
IlESt patent III 1870. II was USED IN the
building of the Simplon tunnel and
has been tried in a number of coun-
tries notably France. But until very
recently it was regarded as still in the
experimental stage. But the old ex-
plosives were never regarded as en-
tirely satisfactory partly because of
the danger in handling them, partly
because of the poisonous gases that
accompany them. That same search
ing for an improvement along this line
which has recently led the Anaconda
mine, in America, to introduce "Sa-
QUILT" (the Belgian invention which
has been used for some time in Aus
ralia and New Zealand) kept the
German chemists working upon liquid
lir.
Immediately upon the outbreak of
he war 1t was put into practical op-
'ration throughout the German min
ng industry. The results have proved
10 successful that it is now certain
hat 1t will continue to be used in
lace of dynamite even after the war
1t Is impossible not to see some
hing symbolic in the fact that this
ldest mine in Germany is being work.