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Show The Story of Milling and Smelting at Midvale .r;f," V'rf'fcf-4 'S. V I "' "s :V"1 " Jl ' T'LV' i - - m v i Midvale, Utah lead ready for the refinery. Pictured above Is a railroad carload of the gray metal which has just been cast and loaded for shipment to the refinery. (Editors Note: This is the last of n nos of five articles on the story of mill-Insr mill-Insr and smelling of lead-zinc ore at l:dvalr 1 An interesting step in the United States Smelting Retinitis: and Min-Idk Min-Idk company's blast furnace process pro-cess at its Midvale lead smelter is the drawing off of the molten lead which has been previously described. de-scribed. The molten slag, which floats on top of the molten lead, is drawn from the furnace and then conies in contact with a stream of cold water which granulates the flag before it is hauled to the dump. How vitally interesting and romantic would be the storv (if it could be told) of the difficulties, disappointments and successes involved in-volved in the prospecting for ore bodies, the mining, transportation, metallurgy and treatment of the ore represented by the many- years' accumulation of thousands and thousands of tons of slag contained in the slag dumps and of the tailings tail-ings from the flotation mill at Midvale Mid-vale Plant. Another interesting story could be written about the economic benefits ben-efits to the miners and the employees em-ployees of large and small mining and smelting companies through t lie years of prosperity and adversity, ad-versity, particularly when consideration consid-eration Is given to the part that the mining and smelting industry has played in attracting population to this area, to the providing of employment em-ployment and to the development of the state. The last and a very important step in the milling and smelting of lead-zinc and other ores at Midvale is tile sale of refined niptnU hv tho company's metal sales department. The money derived from these sales is used to pay wages, cost of materials ma-terials and supplies, other costs incident in-cident to mining, smelting and refining re-fining operations, payment of railroad rail-road and trucking freight charges and payment of many kinds and large amounts of taxes. Obviously the higher these costs are the less return there will be for the ore producer. As ore does not grow it is evident that the return to the producer must be sufficient to cover his costs and give him a reserve of cash which will allow him to search for new ore bodies and thereby perpetuate his existence. exist-ence. It is thus obvious that unduly high costs and high taxes work to the disadvantage of the ore producer pro-ducer and miner as well as to all orl,Q- r.-l, , fTOlS CONCLUDES THE ARTICLES ABOUT THE MIDVALE PLANT.) |