Show 1 MINING AND THE STATE FAIR while indicative either of a desire to belittle the mining industry or of a lack of understanding of its importance to the state state by cram cramping ping the exhibit into a room not over fifteen feet square the showing of minerals at the annual state fair in salt lake this year was creditable and considering the handicap of lack of space was arranged carefully and made a good impression however this tendency to crowd the mineral exhibit into any out of the way corner which cannot be used for some other purpose and which tendency has been growing notably worse from year to year is a poor advertisement ti of the states resources and gives tens of thousands of visitors a very erroneous idea of an industry which last year in utah alone enriched the nation by over and which in the history of the state has produced practically a billion dollars in the base and precious metals the school of mines university of utah this year had charge of the exhibit and it was under the personal direction of R H bradford professor of metallurgy in justice to professor bradford and to his engineer assistants it must be said that they made a creditable showing despite the lack of space and the poor location care was apparent in the arrangement of the minerals they were clearly labeled and the card work was well done the cases were clean and the attendant was courteous and anxious to please the numerous visitors this went a long way toward miti mitigating glating the feeling of resentment with which mining men spoke of the cramped quarters and ana showed what the school of mines could have accomplished if it had been given a fair chance ores from the principal districts of the state were exhibited though necessarily to a very limited extent the rarer war minerals such as molybdenum tungsten 6 manganese potassium antimony radium mercury etc were given special prominence one case contained a beautiful specimen of of noteworthy size and professor bradford called the attention of visitors to the fact that most of the radium produce in the united states comes from utah A case of samples of country rocks showed graphically even to the uninitiated the difference in appearance of various formations mat ions another notable exhibit was composed of alunite from marysvale Marys vale showing various phases of potash production the utah copper exhibit depicted various stages of copper extraction from the phyra to the final blister copper an interesting te process shown in this connection is that employed in extracting copper frow from oxidized ores by means of volatilization the case devoted to products byproducts by of the united states smelting smelling Sm elting refining mining companas Comp anys smelter particularly arsenic and cadmium was highly interesting tintic gintic deep creek and santaquin San received special attention and the exhibit of judge mining smelting smelling Sm elting of park city was also of special merit an assay furnace kept in almost constand operation attracted much notice and favorable comment this last was exhibited by the denver fire clay company of salt lake the federal government bureau of mines at washington had a mines rescue car in the grounds in charge of S A young and H M of san francisco it contained all the apparatus necessary to rescue work and demonstrations were given of methods used in the resuscitation of men overcome by mine gas it is said that this work is identical with the process employed on the battlefield in reviving soldiers who have been gassed and the exhibit proved of great interest to numerous visitors among the machinery exhibits of special note were those of the salt lake hardware the western electric and capital electric companies and landes company and the utah oil refining company had its usual pleasing exhibit of high class lubricating oils etc taken as a whole the exhibition was probably the best state fair ever held in utah barring the sli slight ht to the mining industry it is always easy to tell the other man how to manage his affairs and we wish to avoid any appearance of doing this for the fair association undoubtedly more than had its hands full without worrying about mining in this case it seems to be a problem to be handled by the mining fraternity with a state legislature which is notoriously opposed to mining year after year and with the present occupant of the governors chair touring the state in an open fight against the industry there is little hope for success of any attempt to secure an appropriation n for a special building and worthy exhibit so it is up to the mining Z interests themselves and it is to be hoped that some movement along this line will be made before this time next year |