| Show THE GREAT A ICE MINE President Walker Talks to a IVcivh paper Scribe About Its Affairs This morning a reporter of the InterMountain Inter-Mountain called at the office of the Alice Mining company for the purpose of learning as to whether there was any truth in the rumor that gained some circulation in regard to the shutting down of that mine President Josoph R Walker of the Alice and Superintendent Superin-tendent W E Hall were conversing together to-gether Mr Walker having came up to the camp from Salt Lake yesterday In response to interrogatories concerning the plans of the company the gentleman gentle-man said there is no change The question of shutting down has been under consideration for a long time owing ow-ing to the high rate of freight on salt but it remains in statu quo and there is no immediate prospect of such an event This will be used only as an ultimatum in case all other means fail They regard re-gard the rate of 15 per ton on salt as exorbitant and it is proving a terrible burden on the successful operation of the mine The free ore in the Alice ceases at a depth of 80 feet and the supply has almost been exhausted The ore which is taken out below is very base and the practice of facilitating reduction by mixing the ores now his to be abandoned aban-doned This increases largely the cost of chloridization of the baser ore As an actual fact containing the whole situation in a nutshell Mr Hal says that the cost of salt for every ton of ore milled is 247 This item is almost exactly equal to the labor item in reduction i e exclusive ex-clusive of time cost of mining the ore The situation is constantly growing worse instead in-stead of better as the ore grows baser with depth and the result can only be disastrous unless there is a speedy reduc reluc tion in tho freight on salt Mr Walker says that if the railroad company will only meet them hal way in this matter they will be enabled to make a saving of several thousand dollars per month He will leave for Salt Lake in i a few days and will lay the matter before the Alice directors di-rectors at tneir next meeting and a final decision will be arrived at What it will be Mr Walker is not at present able to stateDo Do you care to make any statement in regard to some strictures which have recently appeared in eastern papers in regard to the affairs and management of the Alice company No I do not care to make any state ment in regard to those matters to the InterMountain or to any other newspaper newspa-per I anyone has any charges to make against the Alice management we are ready to meet them So far there have only been insinuations and they are not worthy of being answered The Alice I am free to say has always given more publicity to its affairs than any other mining company in this camp We have published regular reports re-ports which have been bound together to-gether and which cover completely all the operations of the company for the last seven years These can be consulted freely in this office There is no necessity of makin1 any statement in this condition condi-tion of affairs The mine also is open to inspection The published report that admittance to the mine has been refused is entirely false Not a week has passed but what Mr Hall has conducted visitors through the mines whenever convenient con-venient No questions have been asked as to whether the visitors were stockholders stock-holders or not The bare facts in the discussion are these The Alice Corn pany has not made a dollar lor the past eight months That is the reason no dividends have been declared The Walker Brothers are probably as much interested in the dividends a anybody as they own fiveeighths of the stock bnt there has been no money made The causes mentioned above in connection with the salt matter have conspired to bring about this result Our ore has grown baser and the price of silver has fallen Bultc InterMountain |
