Montana oil and mining journal. [volume] (Great Falls, Mont.) 1931-1953, 1942-05-09
Put Gold Miners to Work
Elsewhere, Says :. 3. Coolidge

/ am frank to admit that have always
been shoe string operator, first leas-
ing gold properties then operating
independent oil and gas properties for
the last 81 years. We were forced out
of the gold mining game in 1919 after
the war when we were receiving $2067
per ounce for gold and our operating
costs jumped up 100 percent, which
forced many gold miners out of busi-
ness. At this time oil development
started in Montana and I became In
tereSted in this.
have spent several thousand dol
lars in the gold mining game in the
last few years attempting to get back
into the gold mining business as I
think 1t the finest business in the world
and due to the subsidy Of SIS per
ounce on gold it is a very attractive
business, but I have become too old
to change horses in the middle of the
stream, although I did attempt to get
interested through other fellow engi-
neers, but was unsuccessful.
Now a word with reference to my
telegram to Mr.. Chapman and I will
enclose a copy of his answer. realize
the fact that we cannot change from
gold mining to strategic minerals over
night, but it must be done gradually,
but I firmly believe this is an about
war effort and has been since the
Germans walked into the Rhineland. |
We have had too many Lindberghs, |
Nyes, LaFollettes, Clarks and even q |
couple of representatives from Mon |
tana who INSTRUCTED our foreign policy
and I also realize that there were too
many mothers who did not want their
boys to fight and too many of our
boys that would prefer to wear petit
coats instead of trousers, but we should
be all out to win this war at the pres
emit time and we should eliminate all
nom essentials, in my humble opinion,
and advocated three years ago that
we should suspend the production of
passenger cars along with business as
usual" and get down to the production
Of airplanes, tanks, guns and ships,
out this was not done Now the effort
should be all the more stringent and
We must go all the way instead of
ollowing the old policy Of "too little
md too late" Senator Borah made the
public statement some time ago that :
his was phoney war and I immedi-
tVSAJ WACu W bOJl 4ll4Il AHA GoSIldDOI ,
Wheeler that the only thing phoney
about the war was the United States
do appreciate the fact that we
night find many old gold miners too
I'D to be transferred into a new setup,
'ut with the subsidy that the gold
miners have received for gold, namely, .
'S5 an ounce, they could very well /
'lace on the pension list all of these /
Id miners who could not fit into the
var program in any other place. !
also read the article by David {
'trickler and do appreciate there are I
many districts that rely entirely on a
old mining, and while he made the t
tatement as to the consumption Of O
5eel, he forgot to mention bottlenecks S
l powder, transportation, labor, ma t
hinery, machine tools and many other a
lings, and reiterate that gold min .
lg is non-essential at this time and U
should be curtailed just as fast as Il
e can transfer the gold industries c.
} the war effort. d
Respectfully yours, f
E. B. COOLIDGE. s.