Show SAVING reputations there are mining engineers some of them of national repute who are so fearful that they may make mistakes and so hurt their reputations that they frequently turn down most valuable propositions and of times as a matter of fact really against their better judgment reputation with them is a thing to be jealously guarded to be laid away in a napkin like the ten talents mentioned in holy writ that it may be in nowise injured or impaired by putting it to the test of being the genuine thing by its owner making a recommendation in which the chance of success might be involved the result being that the possessor of the reputation often deliberately turns down many prospective bonanzas rather than take the risk of one failure by recommending a proposition which afterwards ter wards might not pan out the engineers of this class seem to forget that they are supposed to be working for the interest of their employers rather than to be continually standing guard over their reputations and they turn down almost everything regardless of value or future possibilities the result being that mining investors syndicates and mining companies anxious to secure properties of promise and who are willing to pay for the same and take a certain amount of risk as to future development are doomed to meet with disappointment time after time and they are compelled in many instances to see properties they would have taken had not their experts turned them down picked up by other men and transformed into great producers into splendid dividend pay ers because of this condition this fear of injury to reputation the mining industry suffers greatly and many mines and prospects of inherent worth and attractive possibilities ties remain idle and undeveloped and for the reason that the mining engineer has not the courage of his convictions and will not exercise his better judgment because forsooth there might be a possible failure to the ta inting of his reputation fe all over the west there are to be found many striking instances where engineers failed in their duty to their clients because they were so timid about their reputations one of the best known engineers in the country turned down tonopah To another could see nothing at goldfield and there are many great mines in almost every district in the united states which were time and time again condemned by experts only to he be taken over by men who wanted producers and who were not afraid that their reputations might suffer if they happened to make a mistake now and then it is not so very long ago that the utah copper at bingham utah which has already paid over six million in dividends was offered to an eastern company for but the examining expert turned this property down for fear that anticipations might not be realized and that therefore his reputation might suffer the same play has been enacted over and over again in almost every old and new camp in the west in camps and districts where producing mines and dividend payers have been developed from properties turned down by expert mining engineers in every case the e expert K pert has been supposed to have saved his reputation uta tion but his employers where did they get off |