THE PEOPLE WHO EXTRACT MINERALS The Stages of the Extraction of Minerals.—The miner who digs coal or ore deep clown in the earth is the most important of the people who extract. minerals, but with him should be placed the quarryman, the driller for oil, and the humble digger of brick clay or gravel. All alike are engaged in the most destructive of the extractive industries, for they are wresting from the earth mineral products which no efforts of man can possibly replace, and which even nature can renew only after millions of years. This work has three chief phases, prospecting, or the search for minerals, development, or the work of estimating the supply and preparing to extract the valuable materials, and permanent mining or quarrying which is the main phase of the industry. The work of prospecting is rarely carried on by settled communities, for the old-fashioned prospector wanders about on foot hunting for bits of rock that look valuable, while the modern prospector is a geological or mining expert who lives in a commercial, industrial, or educational center and spends part of his time " in the field." Both types influence business chiefly by showing people where it is worth while to found communi ties in order to undertake the work of development and permanent mining.
The Prospecting and Development work of develop ment is so closely associated with prospecting that the prospector is an important figure in the development community. Some such com munities are extremely peculiar and picturesque. This has been especially true of gold-mining regions in the past and of petroleum regions at present. Such communities are full of the extravagance that usually goes with the sudden and easy acquisition of wealth, and with the alternate poverty and luxury which accompany the sudden gain and equally sudden loss of fortunes. They are not infrequently more or less lawless. Frequently they grow so rapidly that local com mittees take charge of the preservation of order before the government agencies are well organized. California in the days of the " Forty niners," Australia, South Africa, the Yukon, and Siberia all furnish examples of rapid development in the case of gold, and Texas, Okla homa, the Tampico region of Mexico, and Mesopotamia in the case of oil. Most gold towns, especially those depending on placer deposits, and practically all oil communities never get far beyond the stage of develop ment, for the returns are much the largest at the beginning, while within a few years they greatly diminish. The production by permanent methods
is often negligible. New South Wales in Australia, for example, pro duced about $8,000,000 worth of gold in 1898 during the boom period and only $1,200,000 in 1920. Such changes help to explain why mining in vestments often result in loss to the investors.
With another group of minerals, including the ores of silver, cop per, zinc, lead, tin, and some of the rarer metals, the chances of making fortunes in a year or two are much less than with gold and petroleum, for the prod uct must be crushed, smelted and refined before it is ready for use. After the pros pector has located the ore, it takes time to develop the mines, but when a mine is once well established it may have considerable per manence. Nevertheless, even with these prod ucts ore bodies are so prone to come to a sudden end that a steadily profitable industry is assured only when a single company owns so large a body of ore or so many different bodies that the supply cannot come to an end without warning. In such cases the geological structure is carefully studied by expert mining engineers or geologists who base their estimates of the available ore on trial shafts and drill holes which cover the whole property and the surrounding area and are the modern substitute for the haphazard studies of the surface rocks by the old fashioned prospector.
With still other minerals such as iron ore, coal, granite and brick clay, the prospecting and developmental stages are almost eliminated. The geological expert can often determine at the very beginning approxi mately how much ore or mineral is available and how expensive it will be to get it out. Hence, a mine can be opened with exact knowledge as to how much capital is needed, how permanent and expensive the machinery should be, and what kind of town is likely to grow up. The coal-mining towns in Pennsylvania, Ohio, West Virginia, Colorado and other states are of this kind, as are the iron towns in Minnesota, and the stone towns such as West Quincy in Massachusetts, and Bedford, Indiana.