Section C. PRESIDENT'S ADDRESS. 33-WASTES IN MINING. BY SIDNEY J. JENNINGS, C.E., M.AM.I.M.E., M.I.M.M. I have been guided in my choice of a theme for the opening address of Section"C" of the Association, by the desire to find some subject in the Mining Engineering profession which would be of interest, not only to the members of that profession, but also to the followers of the many other branches of scientific enquiry gathered together under that Section. If there is one subject more than another that is of universal interest to the men who make applied science their life-work, that subject is Waste. A celebrated French Chemist is credited with the saying that he would take for his share of the world's goods what other men threw away. The spirit underlying this remark, a spirit of unceasing investigation into waste products, of continual production of something valuable from substances previously thrown away, has made possible in no small degree the material prosperity and comfort we enjoy in the present stage of civilization. But it seems to me that there are other kinds of waste, even more important, than that of products, and I would like you to consider with me some of these wastes. The subject is a very vast one, and I will not pretend to do more than indicate a few heads under which it may be considered. Each one of us can elaborate these heads for himself, and supply illustrations out of his own experience. For my purpose this morning, it will be sufficient to consider briefly the three different kinds of wastes in mining that go to increase the failures in that branch of business. These three kinds of wastes are: First, the waste of thought. Third, the waste of material. I have placed them in this order, because it seems to me the order of their importance, measured by their effects, and also because it is the order of the difficulty of recognizing their presence. It is comparatively easy to perceive the waste of material. The wasted product does not vanish, but lies there, accusing its creator of ineptitude; it, however, always offers a chance of some use in the future being found for it. The waste of labour can be seen and checked while it takes place, but once having been wasted, it offers no opportunity of being utilized for any other purpose. I. THE WASTE OF THOUGHT. It is difficult to follow the waste of thought into its inmost recesses, but a moment's consideration shows how far-reaching such waste is. I do not mean by waste of thought errors of judgment: These last erect for themselves monuments visible to all the world. I mean by waste of thought that habit of mind which tries to shut itself up from the influence of others and laboriously restates a problem and then equally laboriously attempts to solve it, when a little more knowledge would have enabled the worker to find the problem satisfactorily solved by some one else without any waste of thought on his part. Modern Mining, in which comparatively so few of the methods have crystallized into hard and fast lines, offers a particularly good field for illustrations of this kind of waste. Definitions of a mine have varied all the way from that of the disappointed speculator, who declared that a mine was a hole in the ground owned by a liar, to that of the geologist who stated that a mine was an excavation in the earth so designed as to permit of the extraction of minerals. For our purposes we must add the business man's conception of mining to that of the geologist, and introduce the idea that mining is a commercial pursuit designed to yield a profit on the working. This conception of mining cannot be too much emphasized, for it is precisely in order to achieve this point of making mining profitable that wastes of all kinds must be eliminated. I know very well that this commercial aspect of the question is not the only, nor is it the greatest, attraction of mining. There is a glamour about the pursuit, especially the mining for precious metals and precious stones, which lures men on, when their business instinct tells them that they have gone far enough, but the commercial aspect of mining is the solid foundation which permits of this business being carried on, and continually expanded, and this aspect should therefore be greatly emphasized. When men began to analyse the process of mining minerals from the earth, the great cost of preparing the excavations necessary for the purpose probably first impressed them. Some means were sought by which this cost could be reduced. Very soon there probably arose some man with the suggestion to do away with the excavations altogether; his argument probably being that the only necessity for large excavations was to enable men to get to the places where the ore was; that it would be much simpler to get some solvent that would selectively dissolve the desired material from the surrounding waste, and the enriched solution could be pumped to the surface and there treated so as to separate the solvent from the dissolved commodity sought for. This idea proves wonderfully attractive to some men ; all the more so because in certain cases it has been successful. Many salt mines are worked on this principle; some copper mines under very special circumstances have used this idea, the solvent in these cases being water. I have also heard of one silver mine worked on this scheme, the solvent being hyposulphite of soda. Since the discovery of the solvent action of cyanide of potassium on gold, it was to be expected by anyone possessing any knowledge of human nature that the idea of treating gold ores, in situ, by cyanide of potassium would be suggested. But I must confess that I have been surprised by the number of times this idea has been brought to me, and the different classes of men who have suggested it. The care and thought devoted to the perfection of the details of the schemes have been very great, while their essential difficulties have been forgotten in the enthusiasm, fired by what their inventors conceived to be a new and great idea. While I am the last who would defend an idea merely because it is old, or who would seek to prevent the enquiry by new minds into old and apparently well-established practice, I think that you will agree with me in including all the energy expended on the above outlined idea in the category of wasted thought. In the sphere of exploitation of mineral deposits, no better illustration of my meaning can be had than the above. Other instances in the same realm will occur to all of you, which set forth in a smaller way what the enthusiast above referred to illustrates on a large scale. These I will not touch on, but there is a set of instances which applies to another side of the mining industry which equally well illustrates my meaning. I refer to the problem of administration of the mining industry. It has been well said that the best form of Government is that of an Omniscient Despot. But as we can in this world only get a despot without omniscience, we have been constrained to try some other form of Government. Nevertheless, men have always a hankering after the best, and, consequently, whenever a man arises who shows, even in some degree, an all-embracing knowledge, other men, all willing to work for the one-man show, come under his banner. Situated as most metalliferous mines are, far away from the stir of cities and the crowding of men, the administration of a mine tends to become that of a one-man show. This undoubtedly accentuates the individuality of the Manager, makes him self-reliant and resourceful, but it also tends by that very accentuation of individuality, to make him insist on doing things in his own way, without sufficient consideration whether that way is the best one possible. The very resourcefulness of a Mine Manager induces him to try all sorts of experiments which others have tried and tried again, and whose futility has been thoroughly demonstrated. These defects of the virtues of a Mine Manager are not so prominent when there is only one mine in a camp, but when, as in Johannesburg, you have over sixty producing mines, the subtle friction of mind upon mind produces all unconsciously to the individual an excitation which is apt to result in a series of experiments, the vast majority of which will have been tried before, and the resulting waste of thought will be great. Some years ago a Mine Manager boasted to me that he had never been over any other mine on the Rand except his own. His plant showed evidences of this. Some things were excellent, but many designs showed evidences of great ingenuity in doing things in a roundabout way, the same effect being accomplished on neighbouring properties in a very much simpler fashion. One of the means adopted on the Rand to obviate this waste of thought has been the grouping of several mines under one Central Administration. While undoubtedly centralization, when pushed to an extreme, can have a deleterious effect in crushing out initiative and reducing the sense of responsibility of the Manager, it has had, and when wisely administered will continue to have, a most beneficial effect in making the results of one experiment in any given direction, whether positive or negative, immediately available to all the members of the group, by aiding the Manager in all his difficulties with the advice of another experienced and matured mind, thus substituting the deliberative judgment of two men for the possible rash acts of one. Centralization also allows the results achieved in any one department of a mine to be compared on a uniform basis with the results achieved in the same department on any other mine of the same group. Thus while centralization saves the waste of thought in experimenting and resolving problems already adequately disposed of, it promotes thought in showing what other men have achieved in the same line, for nothing gives cause for such quick and steady thinking as a comparison on a uniform basis which shows your own work in an unfavourable light. Centralized management has also other advantages which do not come within the range of our present consideration, and which therefore I will not deal with now. Undoubtedly it can be pushed to such an extreme that its evils outweigh its advantages. But these prejudicial effects are not inherent in the idea of centralization; they are mere excrescences which have been allowed to grow on the system, whereas the good that can be achieved by the system is an integral part of the idea on which it is founded. These inherent advantages give the centralized system a vitality by means of which it must survive any surgical operation, however heroic it may be, necessary to cut away its abuses. II.—THE WASTE OF LABOUR. The waste of labour is so easy and so universal in comparatively new industrial enterprises that it is somewhat difficult to give really striking examples that either startle by their magnitude or arrest the imagination by their novelty. The muscular energy with which any one man is endowed is a certain strictly limited amount; but by the exercise of his brains and the use of tools this energy may be multiplied by many thousand. Wherever man is utilized purely as a source of muscular energy, there you will have to look for and you undoubtedly will find, waste of labour. Here in South Africa, where the division between labourer and overseer is so sharply accentuated by the colour line, where the Kaffir forms such an exceptionally powerful muscular machine and at the same time is supposed to be so relatively cheap, the temptation to waste labour is tremendous, and is I am afraid not always successfully combated. Not only does this waste of labour comprise the relatively cheap Kaffir, but extends to the much more highly-paid overseer; for if labourers are employed in too great numbers on any given piece of work, the cost of supervision must in proportion be unduly inflated. Viewed as a source of human energy the Kaffir stands high in the scale of labouring people, but from the facts that relative to his wants his remuneration is enormous and that his sense of responsibility is very inadequately aroused it is difficult to train him to be as efficient a workman as he is seemingly capable of becoming. There exists but little doubt that if the Kaffir were forced by the promptings of his own unsatisfied wants to work continuously year in and year out, that he would become an excellent labourer. But owing to the fact that his wants when he is in his native kraal are limited, and that he is in reality a landed proprietor, he is able to accumulate in comparatively few years sufficient wealth to live in what appeals to him as being the most agreeable fashion for the rest of his life. That is, he works hard for two short spells in the year, at the planting and reaping seasons, in order to cultivate enough land, the produce of which together with the yield of his flocks will suffice to feed himself and his family. The wages that the Kaffir has, through his mastery of the labour position, forced the industrial to pay him, enables him to earn this comparative wealth by working on the average not more than half the year for a very few number of years. This means that the men engaged in directing industrial enterprises have to put up with a constantly fluctuating labour force, and the proportion of entirely untrained labourers is unduly large. Either one of these factors would tend largely to a wasteful use of labour; their combination results in a state of things which, in spite of the constant and unremitting care of the managers of all large industrial enterprises, is neither satisfactory to them or beneficial to the Kaffir. As a striking example of the waste of labour that takes place in pursuits other than mining, I may be allowed to quote the following figures. According to the 12th Census of the United States, out of a population of 76,303,387 people, 9,349,922 males were engaged in agricultural pursuits. Thus for every male engaged in agriculture, not only were 8.2 people fed, but an enormous quantity of food products were exported, and sufficient raw materials, such as cotton, wool, hides, timber-grown not only for its own manufactures, but leaving an extremely large surplus for export. From the latest figures available to me of the Cape Colony, which comprise the only complete returns I have seen, I find that out of a population of 1,652,036 people, 323,601 males were engaged in agriculture. Or for every male engaged in agriculture only 5.1 people were partly fed, as Cape Colony is a large importer of food products, and not only was the export of raw materials, such as wool, hides and feathers small, but the amount consumed in manufactures in those Colonies was practically nil. While it is impracticable to accurately compare the above figures, they present a sufficiently startling point of view to make one realize |