The open-pit method makes transportation easy, for freight cars can run directly alongside the steam shovels and be loaded at the rate of two tons per scoop, or 5 minutes per car. The 50-ton steel ore-cars, with bottoms that open for dumping, are made up into trains a third of a mile long. From Hibbing and the neighboring towns the trains travel for about 80 miles down a gentle but almost steady grade to Duluth. • As each train passes onto the high piers at the lake shore, it traverses scales which register the weight of each car. The ore is then dumped into huge pockets to await the arrival of an ore ship. When the ship is ready to be loaded, the ore passes from the pockets into spouts at the rate of 80 to 300 tons per minute. The combined advantages of good ore, easy mining, and easy transportation enable the Superior region to produce five-sixths of the ore of the United States.
When mining is carried on by the open-pit method it loses most of its unpleasant features. Like ordinary quarrying it is a healthful, outdoor occupation. The extensive use of complicated machinery demands a large proportion of highly skilled labor, and the fact that the iron is carried to the coal means that there are no dirty, smoky, odoriferous smelters or factories near the mines. It is fortunate that iron, the most useful of the metals, and aluminum, which bids fair to occupy second place, are the two where quarry methods and the exten sive use of machinery enable the ores to be extracted most cleanly and healthfully. In such places higher standards of living can prevail than in the bituminous coal fields, for example: strikes are less frequent, for a dirty job helps to breed discontent, education is better cared for, ;Ithere is more prosperity, all of which helps business.
Permanent Mining of Precious Metals by Up-to-date and by Back ward Methods.—Most gold and silver mines lie among the mountains far from the centers of civilization. Let us compare permanent mining where advanced methods are used as in the Alaska gold mines, and where primitive methods are used as in the silver mines of Mexico.
In Alaska, wherever the placer mines are exhausted and the pros pecting and developmental stages have passed away, the methods of mining are usually so advanced that the work pays if gold the size of a pea can be extracted from a ton of ore. The Treadwell mine has yielded over sixty million dollars' worth of gold from ore running $2 to $3 per ton. In the Gastineau mine the ore contains only $1.50 per ton, but in 1916 the cost of mining was only 50 to 60 cents per ton, and the cost of milling 15 to 25 cents. Hydro-electric power raises the ore from the mines, dumps it on screens, crushes it, carries it to storage bins, and thence to successive steel rollers which crush it as fine as &lin% Then shaking tables covered with water sort the dust so that the heavy gold falls and is carried to Willey tables covered with mercury which forms an amalgam with the gold. Finally the amalgam is heated and the
mercury vaporized, leaving the gold. Although four to ten thousand tons of ore are treated per day, geologists estimate that the mine will continue to produce for 75 or 100 years. Such mines, as well as the iron mines, illustrate the fact that except where the ores are very rich, per manent mining is profitable only if large companies can provide capital for expensive machines and for the complex transportation facilities which are a main factor in all large mining operations. Communities like those at many of the Alaska gold mines, however, have many of the disadvantages of mining towns which are still in the stage of devel opment and prospecting. The climate of most of Alaska is so cold and, the winters so long and dark that people are not tempted to live there I permanently. The miners rarely bring their families; few stay unless their work demands it; and hence the mining communities have a temporary and unprogressive character which is bad for business.
Among unprogressive people like the Mexicans the lack of scientific methods prevents permanent mining except in rich, rotten, soft ores. In the " patio " or courtyard process, men, women, and boys Brea up the soft ore with hammers and sort out what looks good. Then th ore is crushed by a big stone like a thick millwheel set on edge and drawn by a mule. With such a crude process the returns are of course small,' great amounts of metal are wasted not only because everything but the best ore is thrown away, but because even from the good ore only a part of the metal is extracted.
Mining is one of the industries that adds most to the business lift of a country, and one in which scientific methods have been most fully applied so far as the extraction and smelting of ores is concerned. Ii still suffers, however, from serious disadvantages. The main dis advantage, corresponding to the lack of cooperation among ordinary farmers, is the rather unpleasant character of the work and of the corn.
unities, and the consequent low social and civic standards. What most needed is the further application of scientific methods not only the extraction of the ore, hut to the life and work of the miners. ience has developed new uses for old ores, it has discovered how to 'line new ore, and how to mine low grade ores at a profit, and it has aced many new bodies of ore and has invented new alloys which e the value of new metals. What is now needed is to make mining ns attractive and wholesome communities in which to live.