Estimate of costs of mining and reducing ores in Grass Valley district, Nevada County, California, reported by J. F. Nesmith, July 1, 1869. Population of district: Six thousand. Wages of first-class miners: Three dollars per day. Shovelers and carmen: Two dollars and fifty cents per day. Cost of lumber: Eighteen dollars per thousand feet. Cost of mining timber: Four to twelve cents per running foot. Cost of common powder: Two dollars and seventy-five cents per keg of twenty-five pounds. Cost of giant powder: One dollar and twenty-five cents per pound. Cost of quicksilver: Sixty-two and one-half cents per pound. Cost of freight from San Francisco: Seventeen dollars. Cost of fuel: Cord wood, four dollars; charcoal, fifteen cents per bushel. Cost of ten-stamp mill, California pattern, inlcuding freight, erection, &c.: Plan without pans, ten thousand dollars; with pans, thirteen thousand five hundred dollars. Cost of twenty-stamp mill, freight, erection, &c.: About same proportion. The miners' strike.-During the month of June, 1869, a miners' strike occurred at Grass Valley, the object of which was to prevent the introduction of giant powder as a blasting agent. This strike was peculiarly unjust and uncalled for, and the Miners' League undoubtedly displayed very little good sense in the movement. In the first place, the Grass Valley mines, being mostly on narrow veins, are burdened with heavy costs of extraction of ore, and the oldfashioned system of large double drills and black powder is, under such conditions, peculiarly expensive. In order to get room to swing a sledge, the stopes must be made much wider than the vein, and wider than they would need to be for single drilling. In consequence of the quantity of water in many places, (and invariably in the bottom of the shaft,) a great deal of time is lost in charging and tamping holes with common powder, and the practice of working two men at each hole results in much more idleness than would be the case if the men worked singly; since whenever one of them stops for any cause, the other must stop also. Finally, the old system of organization gave the miners many opportunities, of which they were not slow to avail themselves, to pilfer small specimens of the very rich gold quartz which so frequently occurs in the mines of this district. It is a well-known peculiarity of Cornish miners that, although, as a class, sober and well-behaved, (in many cases even religious,) they have no conscience concerning the stealing of specimens, and do not consider it wrong to cheat concerning the underground work. They have been educated to believe it to be the business of the foreman or mining captain to watch against such peccadilloes, and if he is not sharp enough to catch them, they do not hesitate to overreach him in every way. The mine owners of Grass Valley have suffered especially from the stealing of rich rock by the miners. To break a piece of quartz, however valuable, from a mine and to carry it away without the owner's permission, is not legally theft, but trespass. After the rock has been broken the dishonest removal of any of it from the dump or pile is larceny; but it is generally impossible to get evidence which will satisfy a jury of the latter crime; and even when the evidence is sufficient, a Nevada County jury has never been known to convict; hence the thieving miner has hitherto enjoyed a substantial immunity from punishment. Most of the companies do what they can to prevent loss from this source, by obliging the workmen, on emerging from the mine, to strip off their wet clothes in the "dryinghouse," and walk naked across the room before putting on their aboveground suits. But in spite of all precautions, the plundering is known to be considerable. A year ago giant powder was introduced here, and it was soon found to effect a great saving in the mining cost. Single drills, small holes, no waste of time by partners, no delay in blasting wet ground-these were among its mechanical advantages; while the employment of one or two men in each shift for the special duty of firing the blasts and cleaning up the stopes prevented all access on the part of the miners to the newly broken rock, and put an instant end to the whole elaborate system of specimen-stealing, with the necessary attendant system of spying, stripping, and searching. The reduction of the expense of ore extraction amounted in this way to forty, fifty, and even sixty per cent. The new powder was gradually introduced, and its full advantages, and the revolution in the organization of the shift which it involved, were not at first apparent. It is one thing to use giant powder now and then for single blasts, and quite another thing to organize all the operations underground with reference to its use. So it came to pass that the miners received it at first with favor. Those of them who had taken contracts for drifting or sinking found great profit in its use, and were in some cases allowed to take it freely from the magazines of the mine, as it was thought they would in this way grow familiar with it. After this was forbidden (on account of the high cost of the powder, and the too free use of it by the "contractors,") they begged and stole it whenever they could. At the same time it was employed by the ordinary shift-miners for some eight months without serious complaint. But finally, all on a sudden, the Miners' League demanded its exclusion from the mines, alleging that it was injurious to health, and coupled with this a demand that the distinction between surface laborers and miners underground should be abolished and that these classes of workmen should be paid alike a thing absurd in itself, and unheard of in Grass Valley hitherto. I need scarcely say that the miners did not ask to have their pay reduced, for the sake of uniformity, but to have the pay of the laborers raised. The secret of this unexpected attitude is the discovery that giant powder, besides cutting off the perquisites of labor, is diminishing the number of miners necessary for a given production, and so far simplifying the labor of these as to require less skill, except on the part of foremen and powder-men. Of course the natural effect would soon be the reopening of a vast number of mines now idle, and an increased demand for really good workmen at high wages as foremen. Only the shiftless, lazy, and ignorant workmen suffer in the end by the progress of the industrial arts, but unfortunately that is the very class which the leagues are too apt to foster and protect. Nothing is more fatal to the true interests of labor than the notion that skill should make no difference in wages. To pay (as the Grass Valley miners demand) the man who pushes a car or loads a wagon above ground the same as one who drills, blasts, or sets timbers underground, is either to underpay the one or to overpay the other; and certainly, at all events, to remove from both the stimulus of ambition and the motive to excellence. In the strike at Grass Valley, the league was too late. On general grounds, there is not a region in the country where miners have had less reason to complain. Employment has been for many years both steady and well paid. No attempt was made at this time, or talked of, or intended to reduce their wages. Even the murmurs about Chinese labor, which have grown alarmingly bold in many quarters, were not heard in this quiet paradise of employés until provoked by the last folly of those who did not know how to let well-enough alone. And as to the sole plausible reason for a strike-the alleged injurious effects of giant powder-the league was, as I have said, too late. Is the use of giant powder injurious to health? Certainly not more so, if at all, than it was last year, and for several months of this year, when the miners were anxious to lighten their labor, and increase their profit, on contract work, by its employment. Certainly not more so than when they fired their own blasts, instead of having a man to do it for them. It is only, it would seem, when the miners are excluded from the stopes, after the shots are fired, that they find out how terribly noxious (in spite of the alibi) are the gases into which they were ready to go without inconvenience to overhaul for rich specimens the freshly broken quartz. Curiously enough, moreover, it so happens that the giant powder, as now manufactured, is far less likely to be in any way noxious than it was when considered harmless. It is manufactured with greater care, and upon explosion leaves almost no visible smoke. Now, the smoke is all that can reasonably be expected to cause pain or annoyance, as a little consideration will show. Nitro-glycerine or glonoine has long been a homœopathic remedy for a certain kind of headache, and in larger doses it produces this headache as a pathogenetic effect. Rubbing it upon the skin will have the same effect as swallowing or inhaling it. But after combustion, this organic compound is transformed to inorganic gaseous products which do not possess the same properties; and, in fact, when diluted with air, in a decently ventilated mine, should be no more harmful than the gases of any combustion. The headache experienced by those who employ nitro-glycerine in any form as an explosive, doubtless arises from the presence in the air, after explosion, of particles of the original substance, not consumed, just as in the smoke of powder we have an evidence of imperfect combustion. The less visible smoke remains, therefore, after a blast of giant powder, the less time will be required for its effects on the air to disappear. Proper adjustment of the charges to secure absolute combustion is a matter bearing directly on the same point. Few mining captains have yet found out how small a charge may be advantageously employed. The almost universal mistake in the use of this explosive is overcharging the holes. (The useful effect of ablast does not increase in the ratio of the amount of explosive-least of all when the explosive is a quick one.) Even if giant powder gave noxious fumes, the evil could be reduced to a minimum, and would be far less serious than those experienced in quicksilver, arsenic, or even common metallurgical works. But the general evidence is that, after becoming accustomed to giant powder, no one suffers from it. If there are a few so constituted as to be always affected by it, what of that? Some people are always sick when they ride backward; some when they go to sea; some when they smell camphor. Many soldiers cannot, without injury, attend upon artillery practice. But there will be stages and ships and camphor and cannon for all that. If the use of giant powder were universally and seriously and unavoidably injurious to health, it might be forbidden by law. But there is no possibility of that prohibition. The facts are all against it. The Chinese used nitro-glycerine (which is chemically the same thing) in the Central Pacific tunnels, and they are not afraid of it. Now, if it is so fatal as the league asserts, why does not the league embrace the oppor tunity to kill off the Chinese by allowing them to work with it underground? The fact is, giant powder may prove malarious to miners' leagues, but not to miners. This was part of the great labor struggle in the Pacific Coast-a struggle which marks the terminus of the era of mere speculation. For years the miners have been begging for the assistance of capital to erect their industry into a regular business. Now they have their wish, and the first requisite of a business must be complied with: the owners of mines must be free to work them as they choose, and with what force they choose. If a steam-engine will pump for five dollars where two men and a bucket cost ten, the engine must be erected. If the cheaper machine is a Chinaman, instead of an engine, why should not the Chinaman be employed? The best men of all parties agreed on many points involved, and the foolish stubbornness of the laborers and miners forced rapidly an agreement on all. The superintendents of the mines, which had been compelled to suspend operations, after waiting a few weeks to let the miners reconsider the position taken by them, finally procured other workmen from the more northern counties and had no difficulty whatever in doing so. Many of the strikers even returned to their work after they saw that their demands would not be complied with. It is to be expected, therefore, that the operations in this leading gold-producing district will not be disturbed again very soon by a similar piece of folly on the part of the workmen. The placer mines.-The letter of Mr. W. A. Skidmore, in my last year's report, contains a very full description of the placer mines of Nevada and Placer Counties, and it is therefore hardly necessary to enter into a detailed description again this year. I have already said that the scarcity of water has prevented regular operations during the last year in these mines: still, a few of them have managed to do quite well under the circumstances. A representative claim of the class is the one belonging to Judge Brown, at You Bet, Nevada County, and a short description of it will give a very fair idea of the remaining cement mines in the neighborhood. The cement in this claim lies from eighty to one hundred feet below the surface. It is overlain by gravel, which will pay handsomely by hydraulic washing after the cement is removed; the latter is from twelve to twenty feet thick and quite hard. It is extracted by shafts and tunnels, and the timbers in the stopes can be taken out after the cement is removed, so as to allow the superincumbent gravel to cave in, in order to prepare for washing it off cheaply and expeditiously by hydraulics. The hoisting and pumping is done by the same water wheel which furnishes the power for the stamps. The water to drive this wheel costs $9 60 per day. Eight hundred and forty tons worked in June yielded $14,214 28, and a clean-up from one thousand two hundred tons in July gave a result of $17,860 28. The daily cost of working this claim is— Sixteen men, at $3 Three men, at $3 50. $48 00 10 50 9 60 68 10 Ordinary and extra incidentals make the total expense less than $500 per week. The mine has produced between $500,000 and $600,000 and the prospects ahead are good. The mill used on this claim consists of eight stamps of eight hundred and fifty pounds each, arranged in two mortars. Lift, twelve inches; fifty-six drops per minute; discharge, five inches above dies; sieves made out of No. 18 iron with one-eighth inch punched holes; size of sieves, forty-eight by sixteen inches. Most of the gold is caught by the quicksilver in the mortars; the balance by copper plates below. The American Mining Company, at Sebastopol, in the Junction Bluff district, has done quite well during the last year. A full statement of their doings will be found in the annexed table. The Buckeye Hill claims, below Sweetland, have been extensively worked. This company has bought ground in addition to their own, and the average product of their six-weeks' runs has been about $10,000. They employ six men in their new tunnel, which they own from Sweetland Creek for a length of eighteen hundred feet, and twenty-two men at washing. Five hundred inches of water are used. The Prescott claims, near Omega, have been worked with good results by W. Kidd & Co. The gold from these claims is very fine, being worth $20 per ounce. One clean-up in September yielded $10,500. In the Kansas ground the existence of a channel has been satisfactorily established, and a San Francisco company proposes to operate here. My agent for California distributed many sets of blanks among the placer miners of Nevada County, only one of which was returned partly filled. I am consequently not in a position to give as full statistics on this branch of mining as I had intended. Exhibit of producing mines in Junction Bluff mining district, Bridgeport township, Nevada County, California, on July 1, 1869, reported by Anson B. Sweeny. Name, American Mining Company, (not incorporated;) owners, J. H. Brown, G. C. Spooner, S. M. Crall, A. B. Sweeny, T. L. Frew, C. H. Effinger, Moses Davis, James Stoott, L. Gaskill, L. Carmack, J. S. McBride; character, gravel, with cement at the bottom; dimensions of claim, one hundred and twenty claims, eighty by one hundred and eighty feet each; two thousand feet on the course of channel; it varies from two hundred and fifty to three hundred feet in width; country rock, granite; mills, one, run by a hurdygurdy water-wheel; product for the year ending July 1, 1869, $149,000. Remarks. The above claims have yielded in five years, up to July 1, 1869, $611,476. Located in 1852. The prospects ahead are good. Estimate of costs of mining in Junction Bluff district, Bridgeport township, Nevada County, Population of district: Twenty-five families-fifty men and fifty-two children. Wages of second-class miners: Three dollars per day. Wages of Chinese laborers: One dollar and seventy-five cents per day. Cost of lumber: Twenty-two dollars and fifty cents per thousand. Cost of common powder: Three dollars per keg of twenty-five pounds. Cost of giant powder: One dollar and twenty-five cents per pound. Cost of freight from Marysville: One cent per pound. Cost of ten-stamp mill, California pattern, including freight, erection, &c.: Ten thousand dollars. |