Arizona republican., 1917-02-11

were won by the farmer, for, in some cases, hundreds of thousands of dol lars have been extracted from the tailings piles that the court ordered impounded and which the miner wished to throw away. Now we do not find the tailings going down the creek beds. for the miner has learned how poor his tailings may he, the time may come when, by improved metallursical process and devices, they my be valuable. Instances nave been known where the tailings dumps have been reworked with profit four or 1 five times.
 A few minerals. like the silicates, and one or two metals, like aluminium, are ineXhaustible, although a process has yet to be profitably extracted. Many new deposits Of all the metals will undoubtedly be found, but still the time is coming when our mineral re- sources will be exhausted.
 Wastes in mineral production and treatment are of many kinds; there are wastes in mining, in concentrating and ore dressing. in smelting, in flue dust, and in unrecovered dross and scrap. Inefficient methods are adop- ted through unnoted or undeveloped opportunity. Losses are caused by the use of material entirely unfitted for the use to which it is put Air, nght and moisture cause rusting and decay.
 In the process of mining some of the material is inevitably left in the ground, being too low grade to work with profit, but being necessary for roof supports in the form of pillars. Yet many ores formerly of too low grade to pay for extraction are now sources of wealth, and care should i be taken to leave low grade deposits i in position for future development whenever conditions warrant. Improv- ed conditions of mining and timber 1 ing often permit the complete re- ! moval of the pillars and their re- 1 placement with Valueless material i In ore dressing and ore concentra- 1 tion, the losses are often startling and in spite of the advance in the i last Few years. there are still most excellent opportunities for investiga- 1 ton. Present practice should always consider the storage of the material i Knowledge may yet render 1t profit | ably available.
 | So many years it was the custom in smelters to gIanulate slags and wash
 them away. The furnaces of the Ari-
 ona Copper company at Clifton, which
 was one of the largest producers in Arizona, were On the banks of the 1 San Francisco river and the com
 pany was enVied for the advantage i which that river afforded for the dis
 posal of their slags Yet today the Detroit Copper company, of Morenci. [ operating in the same region, but far 1 from the water is thankful that it has slags to retreat. which are richer ! Tn copper than many of its present ores.
 The dust from the stacks and chim- neys Is not only a great waste of
 valuable material but in some cases.
 is very detrimental. Valuable metal l liferOuS dusts are streWn broadcast
 from the stacks of smelters. This. . however, has been corrected 10 some extent in the last few years. Suitable precipitation devices for the dust have
 Jeen invented. and now the dust may
 profitably be briquetted and resmelted.
 and the sulphurous gases manufac- tured into sulphuric acid.
 The losses through inefficient meth ods are not always realized. some
 times because the proper practice has
 not been developed. or oftener because
 Of ignorance resulting from lack of
 technical supervision or because of prejudice against it's employment. The increase in effifiency of method will surely be greater in the future than in
 the past as the metallurgy of copper has advanced greately in very recent years. Yet devices are necessary for
 he conservation of the sulphur as well | as the many valuable metals that now go off in the slag.
 i The question of waste of metals is 1 largely question of their preserva . tion; metals like copper iron, gold
 and silver tend to accumulate ana
 add to the worlds stock. but zirc and
 some other metals are dissipated each year in quantities almost as great as
 the amounts produced. Accordingly.
 any means that tend to prevent the Destruction of metals, whether It be by the use of protective coatings of cement, enamel or paint, or the addi- tion or some substance that render ! the metals comparatively immune. are of utmost importance in intelligent conservation
 Many instances are on record of | valuable. hut little known minerals of
 the rarer elements being passed over
 and lost through inability of the ordinary proSpectOr to identify them. ] Future investigations will certainly develop many important applications for materials now useless, and new exploration will develop resources that are now unsuspected
 The scrap heap is receiving more and more attention every day. and 1 important results in true conservation
 have already been accumulated through the medium of the junk deal
 CT. Iron, by the thousands of tons. is collected and resmelted; lead scrap.
 stereotype metal. babbitt and solder
 are resmelted and used again. Tin rom tin scrap and tin dross; zinc
 from zinc clippings and zinc dross are being recovered; copper from old wire rom old copper ware, from brass and
 bronze scrap. from the brass and cop
 per furnaces, is separated from it's ac- companying metals and comes once
 more to the market. All of this is the
 truset conservation. for it tends to
 keep the worlds stock intact
 Probably no state in the union can Deneflt rom proper conservation more ! than can Arizona, as it has it's de- 1 velopment before it. and although many hundreds of millions have al-
 ready been produced. it is important that the many thousands of millions
 yet to be produced will be done in the
 most economical way. The movement
 of conservation has been far reaching
 and probably conservation and eff
 ciency than do the mines in the state
 of Arizona. The greater produc-
 tion comes from the larger con-
 panies, who are able to keep research
 corps, men whose sole duty is to pre-
 vent waste. and gain the fullest eff
 ciency in their operations The re-
 suits Of the past few years campaign
 on this subject have been almost un-
 beiievable. and things are being profit