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Show HEAVY TOLL EXACTED BY MINING PROGRESS Tho fact that tho community pays for the failures of any enterprise Is shown by the remark so often mado that It cost? more to mine gold than tho gold Is worth, and that the losses of Iho failures fail-ures are not paid for by the profits of tho .-ucocKseB. says Metallurgical and Chemical Engineering. Wc believe that this Is not strictly true, but that there Is ?in element of truth in Jt, and that it is widely truo that the high profits derived de-rived from successful attempts to gain mineral wealth include Insurance against failure. Mining engineers who lay tho proper sirens on tho commorclnl side of mining Insist that mining stocks should return from 10 to 20 per cent on tho market valuo to allow for the cxJiaustlon of mliujml and to recompense the investor in-vestor for previous losses. This is only rlKht. It is plain that tho same conditions hold in tho case of a reduction works that treats a crude mineral and produces a commodity useful to the community. After countless failures a successful now process brings it about that the old plants must be "scrapped." So It Is that in tho constant flux of metallurgy there la always progress, and that tho new processes, when "practlcallzcd," thereby 1 render tho old plants obsolete and make mines of deposits whose ores were commercially com-mercially unavailable. This, of course, has tho effect of annihilating or at least depreciating tho value of existing plants. But In the metal business progress, though seemingly slow, Is none the less an inexorable condition of existence. It Is, moreover, costly and the world pays tho reckoning In tho prlco it pays for Iron, copper, lead, zinc and other metals. |
