rl, and then
herself. After that it was saved for the husband to rinse the worst off
when he came home from the mine. But he could have an additional half
cup to finish with because he was so dirty. And they tried not to use
soap with it so that finally, after letting it settle, it could be added
to the horses' drinking water. It was not that the family could not
afford to pay for water, but there was simply no water to buy.

Into this cheerful hell came the young Quaker engineer, from the heaven
of California and the "city" offices of London where sat the big men
who were intent on having their share of the big things in West
Australia. He was to do his best for his particular big men, but how he
was to do it was mostly for him to find out. His firm had already
acquired interests in several promising properties. He was to help
develop these mines and perhaps to find new ones to be taken on. A
junior member of his firm was already on the ground when Hoover arrived,
but he remained only a few months. It was a long way to London and
Hoover could get few instructions. It was up to him. It was a hard life
with many opportunities to go wrong in any of many ways. But he kept his
brain clear, his body and soul clean, and just everlastingly worked.

There were all kinds of work to do, and all sorts of new things to learn
about mines and mining. The ore occurred in the rock in a manner
different from that in any other known gold field, so finding it and
getting it out, and then getting the mineral out of the strange new kind
of ore, required resourcefulness, "original research," as the scientists
say, and constructive imagination. And the technical problems of
discovering and manipulation once solved, there was still needed
organization, system, and administration to make the mine a paying one.

But all these things were exactly the young engineer's specialties. He
was from the beginning, as we already know, and conspicuously is today,
resourceful, original, capable of prompt decision, an organizer and
administrator. Although there were many trained engineers in West
Australia, there was no one to equal him in these specialties of his.
And very soon his firm's mines, which had so far had little benefit of
executive ability coupled with technical knowledge and originality,
began to pay and their stocks went up on the London market--which was
the criterion of success in the eyes of the men in the "city." About the
stock ratings