Show MINE LABOR volunteers for service and past actions of the draft boards have depleted badly the ranks of the mining forces of the county country the american miner is highly patric otle as also are a large proportion of the foreign reign element in the campy camps and when the e call to duty came practically all of the higher gher grade young men reported at once and without hesitation they are toy hardy accustomed to danger self reliant resourceful their every day life has made abeal so and they are good soldiers and aters for a high class man in one place is 8 generally a high class man in any other after ter training 1111 however vever there is another side to the question as there are two sides to every story ory ana and it is making itself felt with creasing force the places of these high aclus clus ass workers in the mines have been filled marrily aly by inferior material even though ivans ages have sky rocketed with everything else e se ft in life except the pay of the office man conditions have reached a point now where practically twice as many men are required to accomplish a given piece of work in a certain time as were needed a few years ago the operators have made little complaint though all admit that tho situation has become serious and that it Ts a dangerous menace to the steady production of metals absolutely necessary for the prosecution of the war the extension of the draft age undoubtedly will make conditions worse andauer ica may awake in the not distant future to find that the low ebb of metal production is interfering seriously with the nations plans to make a good germany mining and smelting smelling sm elting are just as much war industries as raising food and almost a much so as killing huns nevertheless at times during the past eighteen months there has been en an apparent tendency to give mining a little the worst of legislative enactment and price fixing and it has required constant vigilance lence and hard work for the western mining interests to convince eastern and southern national lawmakers law makers that the production of metals is a matter of considerable importance to the welfare of the nation A green boy or an old man or any other ir individual cannot be sent underground and developed into an efficient miner in a few hours or a few weeks time any more than he could be developed into a successful merchant or banker in a similar period it is to be hoped that this method of filling the ranks of the mine workers will not be employed any more than necessary during the working out of the new draft but th that at the boards will be given the power to retain at least enough experienced miners in the various districts to point the way to the new comers and to break them in gradually A return to former efficiency cannot be hoped for during the war nor for a long time thereafter but intelligent forethought on the part of our lawmakers law makers can mitigate the evils of labor inefficiency with which metal production is now surrounded |