d requiring no effort to make them valuable. In the United States a
factor contributing to the popular interest is the large freedom allowed
by the laws to discover and acquire minerals on the public domain.
Perhaps no other field of industry comes so near being common ground for
all classes of people. The mineral industry is a field in which it is
easy to capitalize not only honest and skillful endeavor, but hopes,
guesses, and greed. It is not to be wondered at, therefore, that in the
popular mind the valuation of a mineral resource is little more than a
guess, and sometimes not even an honest one.

Nevertheless, the mineral industry has become second only to agriculture
in its capital value and in its earning capacity. In this industry it is
hardly possible to arrive at valuations as securely based as in many
other industries, but the elements of hazard are not so hopeless of
measurement as might be supposed. The great mineral and financial
organizations do not depend on mere guesses, but use well-tried methods.
If the general investor were to give more attention to these methods he
would doubtless save himself money, and the mineral industry would be
rid of a great incumbrance of parasites who live on the credulity of the
public. To anyone familiar with the mineral field, it is often
surprising to see the rashness with which a conservative business man,
who would not think of entering another industrial field without close
study of all the factors in the situation, will invest in minerals
without using ordinary methods of analysis of values.

In the following account of valuation of minerals in the ground, and the
closely related subject, taxation of such minerals, the attempt is made
to state some of the principles briefly and simply with a view to making
them intelligible to the layman. Values beyond the mine are concerned
with so many factors of a non-geologic nature that they are not here
discussed.

VALUATION AND TAXATION OF MINES

INTRINSIC AND EXTRINSIC FACTORS IN VALUATION

It is essential to recognize at the outset that the value of a mineral
deposit, like the value of any other commercial material, comprises two
main elements; an intrinsic element based on the qualities of the
material itself, and an extrinsic element based on its availability and
the nature of the demands for it. The two elements may not be sharply
separated, and neither exists without the other. A mineral deposit in
easy reach o