Mohave County miner and our mineral wealth., 1921-12-23
THE PR0SPECT0R, THE MINING EN-
 CINEER AND PROPOSED MINING ACT

mate miner, when they are not upon
 the banker and broker. And again,
 the inept, undiscriminative mining
 laws in force have not allowed the
 public to distinguish the alluvial
 skinner from the sub-soil miner, ow-
 ing to a slight similarity in the sound
 of their stage names; which accounts
 for much of the attitude of hostility
 toward the miner. Any new mining
 legislation can and should make this distinction plain and prominent.
 Here are the reasons and the way. All agricultural, grazing, forest and city lands are alluvium which is de- rived from the disintegration and de- composition of the sub-soil, or rocky crust of the earth-the Atmosphere. All of the elements of alluvial soils that produce and sustain plant and animal life are derived from the bed rock formation. It is condition pre- cedent, limiting in quantity and kind every form of life. Now, sunlight, air, water and the miner are the four active agents Nature employs to per form her services to all. Sunlight | air perform their work on the surface, where the work a. day world of others moil and mingle for her gifts. Water and the miner descend into the dark, deep caverns of earth and return laden with iron, copper, silver and gold. De- prived of these useful metals civiliza- tion would perish. Hence a new min ing act should clearly and concisely distinguish between alluvial and sub soil rights and workers. Such an act would tend to restore to the votaries of the deep ground standing and responsibility they have lost.
 The prospector has gone, but he has not been killed by kindness. His vo- cation carried him away from busy throngs and imposed a life of un- welded solitude upon him. His dream of love was ore-not o'er-and in that dream fair vision of prim school mar in an enchanted abode was ever beckoning him to take the wind and fly to her side. They never met or married, and he is gone-gone where no woodbine twines nor whangdoodle waits to mourn his loss-over the dump with the waste and worthless things.
 Mining Engineers
 A generation ago there were but three engineering schools in the Unit ed States; now there are about fifty that teach mining engineering cours- es. Only quarter of century ago the mining engineer, clad in his high boots and corduroys, was a rather spectacular figure; yet the brilliant services he performed for his em- ployers were even more commanding than his appearance; and his intrin- sic worth to the business of mining was recognized and rewarded. Seeing this, many fond parents sent their sons to engineering schools, believing they were preparing them for useful mining careers and certain positions. When the mining field was fair, open to all and rapidly expanding. No one could foresee general decline of pub lie interest and support, and the slow gravitation of mining operations into the hands of comparatively few con- cerns, nor the exhaustion of many ore deposits at comparatively shallow depth.
 As result of present conditions, and other untoward circumstances in cluded, less than fifty per cent of their number now find employment in their chosen profession; but they have found themselves we'll equipped to en- gage in other more remunerative lines of work. Nevertheless this hiatus amounts to disappointment to not only few of them, who would prefer to engage in mining.
 Scanning the situation broadly, some have noted and objected that al- most any alluvial mountebank, cap able of putting on front, could pose as an engineer before the public and succeed with the imposition. Also that there remained in the employ of mining companies many technically untrained men in responsible positions that they could fill. Just what should be done was question. They realized and admitted it would not be ethical to displace the thorough, practical miner who had arose from the bottom he being the connecting link, the in terpreter, that translates theory into
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