o-operative system all that each individual mine would require
would be a qualified, practical miner capable of opening and securing
the ground in a miner-like manner, and a good working engineer; and
in gold-mining, where the gold is free in its matrix, a professional
amalgamator, or lixiviator. For the rest, half a dozen or more mines may
collectively retain the services of a mine manager of high attainments
as general inspector and superintendent, and the same system could be
adopted with respect to an advising metallurgist and an engineer. For
gold, as indeed for other metals, a central extracting works, where the
ores could be scientifically treated in quantity, might be erected at
joint cost, or might easily be arranged for as a separate business.

A very fruitful cause of failure is the fatuous tendency of directors
and mine managers to adopt new processes and inventions simply because
they are new. As an inventor in a small way myself, and one who is
always on the watch for improved methods, I do not wish to discourage
intelligent progress; but the greatest care should be exercised by those
having the control of the money of shareholders in mining properties
before adopting any new machinery or process.

We have seen, and unfortunately shall see, many a promising mining
company brought to grief by this popular error. The directors of mining
companies might, to use an American saying, "paste this in their hats"
as a useful and safe aphorism. "LET OTHERS DO THE EXPERIMENTING; WE ARE
WILLING TO PAY ONLY FOR PROVED IMPROVEMENTS." I can cordially endorse
every word of the following extracts from Messrs. McDermott and
Duffield's admirable little work, "Losses in Gold Amalgamation."

"Some directors of mining companies are naturally inclined to listen to
the specious promises of inventors of novel processes and new machinery,
forgetting their own personal disadvantage in any argument on
such matters, and assuming a confidence in the logic of their own
conclusions, while they ignore the fruitful experience of thousands
of practical men who are engaged in the mining business. The repeated
failures of directors in sending out new machinery to their mines ought
by this time to be a sufficient warning against increasing risks that
are at once natural and unavoidable, and to deter them from plunging
their shareholders into experiments which, in ninety-nine cases out of a
hundred, result in nothing but excessive and needless