INTRODUCTORY. CHAPTER LXIII. THE MANUFACTURE OF MINING MACHINERY IN CALIFORNIA. The great demand for mining implements of all kinds which attended the sudden development of gold mining in California was at first supplied from the Atlantic States and from Europe. Some of the first quartz mills erected in the State were imported from England. Relics of them may still be found in Grass Valley and on the Mariposa Estate. But this dependence upon eastern and foreign workshops did not long continue; founderies and machine-shops were started in San Francisco, and their extent and number has been increased to keep pace with the rapid enlargement of the mining field of the Pacific slope. With the constantly increasing discoveries of new districts, and the opening of new sources of gold, silver, and copper, the demand for machinery has been enormous and peremptory. But it has been most succesfully met by the mechanical engineers of the Pacific slope. Their work is characterized by great boldness, independence of precedent, ingenuity and originality; and they to-day furnish some of the best machinery in the world for certain departments of the art of mining. The directions in which the greatest advance has been made are: 1. The improvements in breakers, stamp-batteries, &c., and the substitution of iron for wood in stamps and ore-dressing and concentrating machines. 2. The manufacture of pans for grinding and amalgamating. 3. The introduction of silvered and amalgamated copper-plates for sav ing gold and quicksilver. 4. The art of placer mining has been revolutionized; cumbrous and slow working hand machines have given way to gigantic operations which in their extent and effect approach those of Nature. The under current sluice is but one of the improvements to which the development of this art has led. The effects of the discoveries, and of the improvements following them, have been wide-spread. Invention and production have everywhere been stimulated. Attention has been steadily directed to the invention of machines to be substituted for hand labor, especially in rock-drilling, and to the improvement of explosives, all tending to diminish the cost of moving rock and extracting the precious ore. Rock-drilling machines have passed through a great variety of modifications in the United States, and the Leschot diamond drill, which originated in France, here finds its greatest development and its most general and successful practical application. The iron founderies and machine-shops of San Francisco have been sustained chiefly by the demand for mining machinery, and were most numerous and successful in 1865 and 1866, during the period of greatest expansion in prospecting and mining, and the formation of companies. to develop claims and mining ground in all directions. The value of the castings produced at these founderies in the year 1866 is estimated at little less than two millions of dollars, the greater portion being for quartz mills and mining machinery. There were then thirteen establishments in full operation, employing about 1,000 men. The number of large establishments now in operation is somewhat less. In addition to the works in San Francisco, there are founderies in the other large cities, as Sacramento, Stockton and Marysville, Nevada City, and at nearly all the chief mining centers, where mills are built, shoes and dies cast, and repairs made. The principal establishments in San Francisco at which mining machinery is manufactured are the Union Iron Works, the Pacific Iron Works, the Vulcan Iron Works, the Miners' Foundery, and the Golden State Iron Works. The first named is the pioneer establishment, having been founded in the year 1849, by the Messrs. Donahue Brothers, upon a very limited scale, from which it has grown to be the largest and best appointed on the coast. At the commencement, the blast for melting was produced by a blacksmith's bellows, and the tools and materials were few and imperfect. At present, there are in the machine-shop twenty-five lathes, eight planers, and much powerful drilling, cutting, gearing, and shaping machinery. One of the planers is the largest in the State. The smithery is provided with a fifteen-ton steam hammer for forging large work, and the boiler department has automatic punching and riveting machines. The main building is of brick, three stories high, with a frontage of 187 feet, and a depth of 120 feet. About 300 men are employed. The Pacific Works were started in 1850. In 1867 they worked up 700 tons of pig iron, 350 tons of bar and plate iron, with 700 tons of coal; and the value of the product was $300,000. The Vulcan, in 1867, worked up 1,200 tons of pig iron and 200 tons of bar and round iron. This brief mention of some of the more important of the machine making establishments will serve to give a general idea of the capacity of the coast for the production of mining machinery. California not only manufactures mills and machinery for the Pacific slope, for Nevada, Idaho, Oregon, Washington, and Arizona, but exports to British Columbia, Mexico, Central America, South America, Colorado, North Carolina, and, to some extent, to Australia. Its stamp-mills for gold quartz crushing are superior to any other, and are regarded as models to be followed. There is no country where so much money and effort has been expended in so short a time in experimenting with, and perfecting, the various machines used in mining; and although it may be said that there has been a great waste of material and money in the headlong, blundering way in which the progress has been made, it must be admitted that the result on the whole is more satisfactory than it would probably have been by this time, if every problem had been the subject of slow and careful deliberation. The great value of time and labor in these new and rapidly expanding metalliferous regions is to be considered, and likewise the enormous rates of interest, ranging from twelve to thirty-six per cent. per annum; the great cost of transportation, ranging from five to twenty-five cents per pound; and other conditions very different from those in older mining regions, so that it is not possible to make any just comparison between the one and the other without giving a fair consideration to these peculiar and difficult circumstances under which the development has been made. In the following notices of the mechanical appliances of mining the attempt has not been made to give a complete description of them all. Neither time nor the space allowed permitted this; but it has been the endeavor as far as possible to describe the machinery and apparatus of mining now in use on the Pacific slope, and to add such notices of machines used abroad for similar purposes, and to make such comparisons as would be likely to interest and instruct those engaged in mining, and to furnish the data for a general reply to the natural inquiry, what is the position of the United States in this respect, compared with that of European countries. The writer desires to make special acknowledgment to the Union Iron Works of San Francisco for drawings of stamp-mills, hoisting works, and other machinery, from which many of the illustrations have been reduced for these pages. He is also indebted, for valuable information, to Mr. Irving M. Scott, to Mr. Moore, of the Vulcan Foundery, and A. S. Hallidie, esq., president of the Mechanics' Institute. For information concerning the machinery now in use abroad, he has consulted his own notes upon the machinery at the Paris Exposition, and elsewhere, and the works of Burat upon the machinery of the Belgian and French collieries. Having recently, in part, rewritten the report upon mining in the series of reports upon the Paris Exposition, he has felt at liberty to make free use of those pages and of many of the illustrations, electrotyped copies of which had been secured for the purpose. * Report on mining and the mechanical preparation of ores, by Henry F. Q. D'Aligny' and Alfred Huet, F. Geyler, and C. Lepainteur. Washington: Government Printing Office. 1870. |