Show AN ADVISORY COMMITTEE chairman george W riter points out some needed changes in method the american mining congress recently authorized the appointment of an advisory committee on mineral statistics and george W ritter of salt lake city was designated as chairman of this committee in a letter written to congress members mr riter says the committee is directed by the terms of the resolution under which it was created to confer in the future with the department of commerce and labor with reference to forms to be followed in the compilation tand and publication of the census data gathered during the year 1910 from mines and quarries in the united states although it is not mentioned in the resolution a point to be kept in mind is that these statistics will have a very important bearing on the next revision of the port duties on mineral products and may also have some bearing on the future policy of the government with reference to the mineral lands of the public domain former census reports in so far as they have related to metal mining have been almost worthless the only exception being the special census of mines and quarries 1902 in the special report for 1902 the chapter on gold and silver mines aynes including lead mines the division of the mining industry in which my personal interests center conveys the startling information that this branch of the mining industry does not pay its own way it appears table 1 page that producing minest mines 2992 in number sold their product for the year for above the cost of production but that non producing mines listed to the number of spent without getting any returns the conclusion is that the gold silver lead mining industry fell some behind for the year omitting placer mines from the computation the deficit is much greater if the report falls short of the truth more than likely it does so in not disclosing the whole amount spent on producing non properties because mines having no production are more apt to es cape making returns but the trouble with the figures is that they are all lumped together the data would be more valuable if separate were made for mines that are profit paying and for those that are non profit paying also if the data were tabulated so as to group the mines according to the nature of their product later on it might be well for our committee to consider what sort of mining statistics are really worth keeping regularly many mining operators feel that they are now overburdened with calls for sta statistics the requests come from the U S geological survey the bureau of the mint the bureau of the census the commissioner Commissio nef of internal revenue state statisticians mine inspectors tax assessors and boards of equalization as well as frow from producers associations and various technical and trade journals the persons making these requests so many of them want the data in some odd form or for some odd period of time and if a producer tries to to satisfy everybody much of the time of his office f force orce will be spent in taking figures apart and piecing them together again in a different way in our state for example the law used to call for annual return of mine production and net proceeds for taxation purposes for twelve months ending march another law called for a different statistical return for twelve months ending june 30 and so on we have succeeded in g getting etting the laws changed so that the calendar year is now the usual period for which state statistics are required but still many mining concerns hardly think it worth while following any regular system of the their ir own because they say the work will only have to be done over again to suit the ideas of some government official |