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Show Steady Growth Marks History of Utah Mining The earth has been very kind to the human being. Before civilization, civiliza-tion, the roaving tribes gathered food and clothing from the surface of the earth, but when man began extracting minerals from the dark recesses of the underground, civilization civili-zation was born. The stone age ended with the development de-velopment of the metals and the machine age sprang from the prog- ress made in the application of metals in the arts and industries. Civilization has progressed far and through the story of this progress is woven a story of metals. Those who extract metals from Mother Earth bear a heavy burden of responsibility. They are responsible respon-sible to the civilized world for the manner in whieh they must mine these metals without waste and to the best interests of society. Operators of the mines of Utah are cognizant of this responsibility as can be evidenced by the fact that the mining industry in this state has progressed steadily since its beginning, shortly after 1SG0. Many of the original mining districts dis-tricts are still producing and several sev-eral properties hsve been in almost continuous production for 70 years. The major Utah mines, smelters, and affiliated industries are organized or-ganized and operated more like manufacturing industries with a long time program blocked out ahead of them, rather than as a come-and-go explorative type of mining enterprise sometimes found in other areas. This type of program pro-gram must be continued, or mining -will decline and eventually disap pear from the state. Mines must be permitted to carry forward a sufheient amount of exploratory work to insure future production. The following table shows the consistent growth of the mining industry in-dustry in Utah, depicting the combined com-bined physical volume of mineral production in the state since 1S70, weighted according to relative monetary value produced of each mineral in each of the major periods of mining development in Utah. The index was computed from the official reports of mineral production by the U. S. Bureau of mines. RELATIVE GROWTH OP UTAH'S BASIC INDUSTRIES 1900-1937 1900 100 Farm Live- Manufac-Crops Manufac-Crops stock luring Mining li'nr 111 (21 (3) (.11 1900 100 100 100 100 1S09 1S2 121 259 148 191!) 306 139 313 172 1929 215 221 366 365 1937 141 197 320 363 livery citizen should carefully study the importance of our mining industry and the amount of money that is distributed in this State from the proceeds of our mines. If our mining industry is shackled by unreasonable methods of taxation and other disturbing regulations, it may well be that the industry will no longer be able to operate at a profit and will be obliged to discontinue its operations. This would be a very severe blow to every worker in this State and to everyone engaged in business by reason of the fact that the purchasing purchas-ing Ktwer of a considerable group of workers would be practicaliy nil. |