MIRACLE OF THE MINES

BLACK AND WHITE PHOTOGRAPHS BY RAY MANLEY, UNLESS NOTED MIRACLE OF THE MINES AS TOLD ON THE FIFTIETH ANNIVERSARY OF ARIZONA'S UNINTERRUPTED LEADERSHIP AMONG THE NATION'S NONFERROUS METALS PRODUCING STATES EDWARD H. PEPLOW, JR. CHARLES H. DUNNING

Charles H. Dunning came to Arizona as a mining engineer fresh out of Yale University in 1909. He has been here ever since, as consultant to large and small mines and as an independent mine operator. He also served for seven critical years at the end of World War II and after as Director of Arizona's Department of Mineral Resources.

Edward H. Peplow, Jr. is well known as a writer on Arizona subjects. His 3-volume History of Arizona was published in 1958 and is recognized as a standard in its field. He has also been author or co-author of several other books, while his articles have appeared frequently in ARIZONA HIGHWAYS and other magazines.

Together Messrs. Dunning and Peplow wrote ROCK TO RICHES, The Story of Arizona Mines & Mining-Past, Present and Future.

Rock To Riches, the story of American mining as reflected in the colorful history of mining in Arizona, is a most welcome addition to the literature of the Southwest. It covers the history of Arizona mining from prehistoric times through 1957 and later.

Engineering & Mining Journal, highly respected bible of the industry, said: "ROCK TO RICHES offers a refreshing, interesting, accurate and popularly written picture of the mining industry as it really is. The book repreSents a nice balance of the technical aspects of mining; mining's heroic contribution to the industrial age; and the romance, humor, drama and adventure interwoven in the story of the birth and growth of the U.S. mining industry. The authors are to be commended for writing a book that will go far to satisfy the popular curiosity about mining the little known industry. The book has appeal for surprisingly diverse audiences: those interested in the history of Arizona and the Southwest; weekend prospectors; professional miners; lovers of good stories and folk yarns; stockholders in mining enterprises; and students of mining, either dilettante or serious.

It is well illustrated with photographs, both old and modern, and with drawings by Larry Toschik. The latter range from unusually lucid cross-cut views of mining operations to historically interesting illustrations of the nine chronological periods into which the story is divided. The book also contains a complete index, a glossary of mining terms, statistical section and other easy-to-use information.

Published by Southwest Publishing Company, Inc., 817 West Madison, Phoenix, Arizona. 400 pp. Price $8.75.

ABOUT THE AUTHORS

When Coronado led his colorful caravan across Arizona 420 years ago, he was seeking the fabulous mineral wealth ancient legend attributed to the Seven Cities of Cibola. When, two and one-half years later, he retraced his steps, he was a bitter, broken man. The Seven Cities of Cibola had proved to be nothing more than modest Indian villages, their only gold the ripe corn that had saved the lives of the starving Spanish army. The only spoils Coronado brought Viceroy Mendoza were frustration and disillusion. How much more frustrated would they have been had they realized that Coronado's army actually had marched across a wilderness which hid some of the greatest bonanzas of all time! Along Coronado's route, and within a few miles of it, lay buried mineral wealth sufficient to have financed the King of Spain's conquest of the world several times over. Yet history must not deal too harshly with Coronado on this score. It was to be more than three and one-quarter centuries until Man began to have an inkling of the riches Nature had buried almost prodigally in Arizona's mountains and desert. And it was to be, from that time on, a constant contest between Man and Nature to prove whether Man had the faith, courage, initiative, inventive-ness and determination to wrest the treasure from Nature's Arizona trove. The year 1960 marks the fiftieth anniversary of Arizona's uninterrupted leadership of the Nation's great producers of nonferrous metals. More than eight billion dollars worth of metallic minerals have been won from the erstwhile wilderness Coronado thought was barren. Not only has Man proved to have the qualities demanded of him in this contest; he has proved that with those qualities and the cooperation of Nature he can work virtual miracles. The greatest of these miracles is that in 1960 Arizona has greater known, proved reserves of usable copper ore than ever before in her history! At first the white man's interest in Arizona metals was confined almost exclusively to gold and silver, and Arizona had enough rich surface deposits of both to whet the interest of many and fatten the purses of not a few. As early as 1736 an Indian-probably a Yaqui-made a spectacular find of silver in Northern Sonora near Arizonac, the ranchito just below the present border. The site proved to be almost everything the Spaniards were looking for: it yielded great slabs of nearly pure silver, thus was named Planchas de Plata. One chunk dug out of the surface weighed 3,500 pounds, and it took the combined efforts of four forges working at once to cut it into transportable pieces. Many other large slabs were mined at or near the surface, all of them so pure they required only a minimum of refining effort.

News of the discovery rocked the Spanish Empire. In the Planchas de Plata King Philip saw potential financing for his plans of conquest. One of the richest surface discoveries of minerals ever made, the Planchas was decreed to be not merely a mine but a natural wonder. As such the entire thing belonged to the crown, not just the traditional "royal fifth" ordinary mines were taxed. Unfortunately for the king, however, two factors intervened to deprive him of revenue from Planchas. First, such spectacular surface deposits seldom persist in depth, and the Planchas proved no exception; it was quickly mined out. Second, human nature being what it was then and still is, Spanish, Mexican and Indian prospectors acceded outwardly to the king's decree, then proceeded to make neat little private fortunes bootlegging the metal from the Planchas de Plata to the last ounce.

The Planchas de Plata did have two significant effects on mining in Arizona, however. It stimulated the exploration which led, in 1750, to the discovery of the metal deposits at Ajo; and it served as the model for innumerable legends of fabulously rich but lost mines which persist to the present day in Arizona. Strangely, however, the Planchas de Plata is not included in the list of lost mines, the fact that it was thoroughly worked out apparently having been accepted very early. Strangely also, the deposit at Ajo first won fame on the false premise that it was rich in silver, the early prospectors evidently mistaking copper sulphide for silver sulphide.

All sorts of colorful and romantic stories still are repeated about the mining activity in Arizona during the 1700's when the Jesuits and then the Franciscans were bravely building their mission chain in the Santa Cruz Valley. One favorite concerns the discomforture of the priest in charge at Tumacacori. A dignity of the church paid him a visit and, during dinner, asked for the saltcellar. The poor priest, the story says, was mortified to have to confess he had none. To make amends, he is said to have dispatched some Indians to a mine in the hills nearby, where they mined, refined and fashioned silver into a large saltcellar. Within twenty-four hours the priest was able to save face by presenting his departing guest with this handsome gift. The story is supposed to illustrate the richness of the mines of that day.

The tale of the Salero (Sp., saltcellar) Mine may be partly legend, of course, as were most of the reports of flourishing Spanish mines in what is now Arizona; but between 1790 and 1820 there was quite a bit of mining in the mountains west of Tubac, and no doubt many rich surface showings made modest but transient fortunes for their owners. There is no evidence, however, to support the legend that the Spaniards did extensive smelting or refining in the area. It is most likely they confined their attention to ores rich enough to warrant transportation to the big mining centers like Durango farther south in Mexico. And, of course, they also did extensive placering along the creeks and rivers, recovering gold in almost pure form. But all their efforts merely skimmed the surface. Their total revenue from Arizona mines during the 324 years between 1530 and the Gadsden Purchase in 1854 probably did not amount to the value of one shift's work in one of Arizona's major mines today!

Oddly enough, the United States first became inter-Prospectors are incurable optimists. That's usually about all they have to sustain them. Throughout history this optimism (some heretics have called it gullibility, some even greed) has been the chief ingredient of every gold rush, every mining boom town. A true prospector was always ready to believe tales of "The Mother Lode" and that gold and silver could be found in the most unlikely places.

THE RICH HILL PHENOMENON

Nor was such optimism always foolish. The richest gold placer ever found in Arizona more than justified it. Any school boy knows placer gold is found in streams, in low beds of water courses where it has been washed as it eroded out of veins and outcrops higher in the hills. It's heavy; thus it works its way downward.

Probably no one was more surprised, therefore, than the knowledgeable old prospectors in the Peeples-Weaver party who found Rich Hill in 1863. From a single acre they picked up more than half a million dollars worth of gold nuggets in a matter of days-and back when a dollar was worth something, too. The wonder, though, was that they got the nuggets not from a stream bed but from the flat top of a mesa! Few, if any, similar deposits ever have been found, certainly none so rich.

Geologists explain the mesa top was a mass of granite bearing innumerable rich little veinlets. As the granite eroded away during the ages, the gold was released. But it remained where it fell, too heavy to be blown away and too durable to erode. Investigations have found no evidence of any important underground deposits there. But even today, following heavy rains, gold nuggets still are found on the flat top of Rich Hill.

In case you're interested, Rich Hill is located a few miles east of Congress, near Peeples Valley up Yarnell Hill. Anyone in Wickenburg, Congress or Congress Junction can direct you. They might even join you in the outing if it has rained recently.

NOTES FOR PHOTOGRAPHERS COPPER MINING IN ARIZONA BY CAMERA OPPOSITE PAGE

"HARD ROCK" BY RAY MANLEY. 4x5 Linhof camera; print film made from Ektacolor negative original; f.11; strobe light flash; 5½" Symmar lens. This photograph shows a miner drilling ore in a square-set stope in the underground mines of the Phelps Dodge Corporation at Bisbee. Mining underground is all work and no play. Bisbee, one of the most important copper mining centers in the U.S.A., is often referred to as "Queen of the Min-

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ing Camps."

"OPEN PIT AT RAY" BY JOSEF MUENCH. 4x5 Linhof camera; Ektachrome; f.18 at 1/50th sec.; 6" Schneider Xenar lens; April; sunny day. Photo taken from the old town of Sonora looking toward the open copper pit at Ray. Just off Arizona State 177. Teapot Mountain overlooks this growing copper pit which is gradually swallowing up several small communities on the hillsides. Sonora offers a fine viewpoint of the colorful man-made abyss. The operation at Ray is part of the Kennecott's vast copper empire.

"SUPERIOR, ARIZONA" BY CARLOS ELMER. Burke & James Panoram camera; 120 Ektachrome E-2; f.6.3 at 1/100th sec.; 5" Ross lens; September; near sunset, stormy day; meter reading 200; ASA Rating 32. This view of Superior and its copper smelter was made near the end of a windy and stormy day. The late afternoon sun came through the clouds and rain for a few moments, permitting this view to be made. The Magma Copper Company operates the mine and smelter at Superior.

THE PRACTICAL MRS. PEARCE

To most true prospectors, the search is the thing. The fishing is always good, even when the catching is lousy. Most of them died broke but happy. It was easy come, easy go.

But every once in a while a true prospector was known to have changed-and usually the change was wrought by a woman, of course.

Take John Pearce, who first appeared on the Arizona scene at Tombstone. A true prospector, Pearce, but a truer husband. Even though he had prospecting in his blood, when Tombstone began to wane in 1893, he acquired a ranch in Sulphur Springs Valley and began raising cattle. Obviously he was married.

Probably unbeknownst to Mrs. P., however, he beat the brush on his spread for more than strays. In 1895 he and John Kinsman located the first claim on what became the famous Commonwealth silver-gold mine. It was rich and it was big, and no records are needed to picture the two old prospectors as they read the assay showing $80 worth of silver and $20 worth of gold per ton of ore. The only bounds their joy knew was Mrs. Pearce.

Not much is written about that lady. But not much needs be. There is a persistent tradition that when John Brocknow, banker, and Richard Penrose, of Cripple Creek (Colo.) fame, bought the mine for $240,000, Pearce refused a bank draft for the first $50,000 payment and demanded gold instead. This, of course, he might have done on his own. But what makes that seem unlikely is that in the contract there was an unusual clause, a clause granting to Mrs. Pearce the exclusive right to operate a boarding house at the mine.

NOTES FOR PHOTOGRAPHERS CONTINUED CENTER PANEL

"OPEN PIT MINE AT MORENCI" BY RAY MANLEY. 5x7 Aerial camera made especially for Ray Manley Commercial Photography. Anscochrome; f.9 at 1/500th sec.; 8½" Symmar lens; bright day with back lighting. This is an aerial view of the Morenci Open Pit Mine of Phelps Dodge Corporation located at Morenci, Arizona. The town of Morenci and Stargo townsite appear in the right background. Taken from a Super Cub airplane at approximately 4000 feet altitude. Meter reading was averaged from bright reading on pit area and relatively low reading on surrounding area. The Morenci operation of Phelps Dodge is the second largest copper producer in the United States and the fourth largest in the world.

"PHELPS DODGE MINE AT AJO" BY RAY MANLEY. 5x7 Aerial camera made especially for Ray Manley Commercial Photography; Anscoschrome; f.9 at 1/500th sec.; 8½" Symmar lens; bright sunlight (some smelter smoke). This is an aerial view of the New Cornelia Open Pit Mine, plant, and town of Ajo, Arizona. This property is owned and operated by Phelps Dodge Corporation. The photograph was taken from a Super Cub plane at approximately 2000 feet elevation. The history of mining in the Ajo area goes back to the days of the Spanish Conquest.

"LAVENDER PIT-BISBEE" BY RAY MANLEY. 5x7 Linhof camera; Ektachrome; f.16 at 1/75th sec.; 5½" Symmar lens; bright day. This is a view of the Lavender Open Pit Mine at Bisbee, a Phelps Dodge property. The coarse crusher building, the structure housing the conveyor from the crusher and U.S. 8o are seen in the foreground. Extensive developments have been made here since this photograph was taken. (See photograph on page 24.) "THE MINE AT, BAGDAD" BY CHARLES WOLZ. Rollieflex 3.5F camera; Ektachrome; f.8 at 1/60th sec.; % Plannar lens; November; bright, clear sunny day-late afternoon; ASA rating 32. The Bagdad Copper Mine is located approximately seventy miles west of Prescott, fifty miles northwest of Kirkland Junction on U.S. 89. The Open Pit Mine at Bagdad had its beginnings in the fall of 1945 when the decision was made to change from underground block caving to open cut method of mining. Presently the mining operation is carried on a 5-day week, mining 23,000 tons of overburden and 7,000 tons of ore each day.

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"THE MILL AT SAN MANUEL" BY RAY MANLEY. 4x5 Calumet View camera; Anscochrome; f.11 at one second; Schneider gomm wide angle lens; existing light was used; sunlight was filtering in through windows to help in the exposure. This is the grinding bay of the concentrator, showing rod and ball mill sections. The San Manuel property of the Magma Copper Company is one of Arizona's newest copper mines.

Interested in acquiring Arizona not as a rich source of metals but to provide an overland route to California, which already was winning fame for its lush farmland and its potential in minerals. By the time the acquisition of what now constitutes Arizona was finalized in the Gadsden Purchase, however, enough people had heard of Arizona mines to prompt immediate exp exploration. Between 1854 and the outbreak of the Civil War, War, such men as Charles D. Poston, Henry Ehrenberg, General S. P. Heintzelman, Raphael Pumpelly, Silvester Mowry, Pauline Weaver, John Swilling, Daniel Ellis Conner, Peter R. Brady, Samuel Colt and others had contributed to a colorful and profitable chapter in the history of mining in Arizona.

The stories of these rugged and resourceful pioneer miners raise the question of why current writers of Western fiction devote so much attention to cowboys and Indians, so little to miners and Indians. When the Civil War occasioned removal of Federal troops from the territory, the Apaches unleashed a campaign of terror which lasted more than two decades. Hundreds of lives were lost, scores of people suffered Apache torture, and none but the foolhardy and the well-armed ventured far from guarded communities.

Yet despite the Apaches, despite the ruggedness of the mountains and the searing heat of the desert; the cold of the higher elevations; despite the difficulties of transportation and the almost complete lack of long-distance communications, the men listed above and their colleagues between 1854 and 1880 established a thriving mining industry in Arizona and at the same time established the tradition of Arizona miners working virtual miracles, which tradition still is as vital and dynamic as it was a century ago.

To the modern air-borne, car-borne Arizonan one of the most startling miracles worked by the pioneer prospectors was their thorough exploration of the territory. Those tough-legged oldtimers were as determined as their burros were patient, and in twenty-five short years they spotted virtually all of Arizona's major ore bodies. With only a few exceptions, by 1880 every primary ore body in Arizona with any considerable surface expression had been examined. Many of them produced fortunes, and others were passed by because they had little economic importance at the time. Silver and gold were the two metals that received attention then, of course, for there was little demand for copper, lead and zinc. During this first quarter century the mines in the Santa Cruz Valley area were all but worked out of rich surface ore. Then came the gold rushes to the Gila and Colorado which spawned the boom towns of Gila City, La Paz, Ehrenberg and Olive City. Almost simultaneously, even while the Civil War raged in the East, the Walker and Peeples-Weaver parties penetrated the wilderness of Yavapai County, where the Walkerites found rich diggings along the Hassayampa and Lynx Creek, and other spots in the Bradshaw Mountains. The Peeples-Weaver party followed a different route and found the fabulous placer at Rich Hill, said to be the richest single placer discovery ever made in Arizona.

In that same year, 1863, Henry Wickenburg wandered away from the Peeples-Weaver party and stumbled on his now famous Vulture mine, reported to have produced $2,500,000 in gold during its first six years of operation-back in the days when a dollar was real money,too! And up in the northwestern region, John Moss struck pay dirt in the area near present-day Oatman, quickly took out $200,000 in gold and thus attracted to Mohave County the prospectors who found many other important mines in the River Range, the Cerbats and Hualapai Mountains.

Among the ore bodies that had been noted and passed by were those at Clifton-Morenci, Globe, Ray, Bisbee, Jerome and Ajo. While most of them later produced considerable quantities of gold and silver, they were primarily copper deposits, and their gold and silver contents were not sufficiently rich to interest the early miners. Silver definitely was economic king in Arizona. Gold challenged for a while in the early days; it was the more glamorous, and it was found in rich placer deposits from which virtually pure metal could be taken for relatively little work. But in the overall economic picture through the years, gold couldn't compete with the unprecedented richness and production of Arizona's great silver mines.By 1880 the names of Arizona silver mines were almost household words in the East and on the West Coast. Stories of the Globe, Peck, Tip Top, McCrackin, McMillen Basin, Silver King, Tombstone and so on circulated freely and were just as freely embroidered to lure experienced and inexperienced prospectors alike to the Southwestern deserts and mountains in search of similar bonanzas. A few more were found, in the Cerbats, and the Bradshaws, and the rich Commonwealth was located near Douglas. The rich gold deposits at the Congress, Harqua Hala, Fortuna, Goldroad, King of Arizona, North Star and Octave continued up to the turn of the century and after to lend glamour to the weary and lonely business of prospecting.

But two factors were at work by the 1880s to deemphasize silver and gold and to focus the spotlight on copper and, much later, the so-called minor metals-lead, zinc, manganese, mercury, molybdenum, vanadium and, finally, uranium. The beginning of industrialization in the United States was creating an increasing demand for copper. This growing demand was synchronized with the first evidences of the depletion of the fabulously rich copper ore bodies in the Butte and Lake Superior regions. It became apparent to men of vision that new sources of supply would have to be found to fill the demands of the burgeoning market; and Arizona had been shown to have large untapped resources of copper. Second, the attention of Arizonans was rudely diverted from silver in 1893 when that metal was demoni-tized. For nine years the question of the free coinage of silver had been a major political issue in the United States. William Jennings Bryan, famed as the "silver-tongued orator," led the Democratic forces in their fight to continue unlimited coinage of silver. Even when Republican forces won and demonetized silver in 1893, Arizonans continued to hope for the return to the former profitable market, and it was sure political suicide in Arizona to be known as a Republican for years afterward.

During the last two decades of the 19th Century, however, Arizona's economic plight was greatly alleviated by the increased activity of the copper mines. In 1880 William Zeckendorf, Albert Steinfeld, Ed Reilly, George Bisbee, Ben and Lewis Williams and two San Franciscans named Martin and Ballard were interested in a copper claim which had been staked out by George Warren in the southern part of the territory. They all felt the Copper Queen, as they called it, had potential; but before they undertook the sizable investment necessary to develop it, they wanted technical advice from an expert.

Their choice proved one of the most fortunate they could have made, both for themselves and for Arizona. They commissioned Dr. James Douglas, who had won acclaim for his solution of smelting problems in the East, to come to Arizona and examine the property. On the same trip Dr. Douglas filled a commission for Logan and Lenig, Eastern investors, to examine the Eureka and Wade Hampton claims in Jerome. Three days on these claims sufficed to satisfy him that his principals should exercise their option to buy, which they did, selling the claims two years later to the Jerome interests for which the town was named. Then he went on to Bisbee and enthusiastically put his stamp of approval on the Copper Queen mine, through which he eventually attained the presidency of Phelps Dodge Corporation and a lasting place in Arizona's Hall of Mining Fame.

Meanwhile, Henry Clifton's find of rich copper showings in the eastern part of the Territory along the San Francisco River had attracted the interest, in the 1870s, of a group of men in Silver City, N. M., including Ike Stevens, Jim and Bob Metcalf, Charles and Baylor Shannon, Jim Bullard and Joe Yankie. Despite the constant danger of Apache attack, Stevens and Metcalf eventually interested Capt. E. B. Ward and the Leszinsky brothers in the property. Capt. Ward acquired the Arizona Central, Copper Mountain, Montezuma and Yankie claims, while the Leszinskys bought out Stevens and Metcalf and launched the famous old Longfellow on its career. The Ward holdings were acquired upon Ward's death in 1874 by William Church and his brother John and became the foundation of the Detroit Copper Company. The towns of Clifton, Morenci, Metcalf and Duncan grew up around the complex of mines in the area and were supported by the Detroit Copper Company, Arizona Copper Company, Shannon Copper Company and other smaller interests. In 1895 Phelps Dodge Corporation bought all of Detroit Copper's holdings and later, in 1921, came into complete control of the area through its acquisition of the Arizona Copper Company.

Also during the late years of the 19th century the great copper mining enterprises at Jerome, Globe and Bisbee were being organized and reorganized, explored, developed and re-examined. Later came developments at Ray, Superior, Inspiration, Miami and, still later at Ajo. But a common theme runs through the stories of all Arizona's great copper mines, a paradoxical theme and one that spelled heartbreak for many a pioneer prospector who staked the original rich claim but who found there is much more than staking a claim involved in converting mountains of rock into spendable riches. Except for a few bonanza type deposits, the rich surface spots did not last long, and it took the combination of great overall tonnages, mining technological knowledge and tremendous capital to convert otherwise worthless rock into valuable resources.

Most of Arizona's great copper properties had their roughest going in their early days, when the ore was so rich it would make any mining engineer in the 1960s drool with envy. One running twenty-five per cent was quite ordinary, and rock carrying forty-five per cent and even more was not uncommon. Many a waste dump and tailings pile in those rich old days contained ten times as much copper percentagewise as does the majority of ore being mined today. When the ore dropped as low as ten per cent or lower, the men in charge began to get worried and looked around desperately for new sources of better grade.

During this period of 1880 to 1910 and later, labor was cheapso cheap that this became the disgraceful era of the "ten-day" miner. One of the indisputable facts of mining life was becoming increasingly apparent: it takes a substantial investment before an ore body becomes a working mine. Few individuals have sufficient capital to defray the initial costs of developing Arizona's great copper mines; the only recourse lay in professional management of large, stock-issuing corporations.

Up until then, most mines had been owned and operated by small groups of individuals, who usually worked in the mines themselves and who were there on the ground to associate with the hired hands personally. If a miner had a gripe, he could sit down at lunch with the owner and talk it out. If working conditions were unsafe or too unpleasant, the owners suffered the same hardships as the hired laborersand usually corrective steps were not long in coming.

But when ownership shifted to impersonal entities known as corporations, the actual owners were hundreds of nameless people who lived far from the mine. Mining became largely a cold-blooded business affair. Managers were sent out from the East with orders from the officers to make money or else. Stockholders seldom stopped to realize their dividends accrued mostly from the sweat of hired miners' brows; there was none of today's marvelous machinery to lighten the labor.

By the same token, there were none of the modern technological wonders to streamline mines into models of efficiency. There were virtually no taxes to worry about; supplies were relatively inexpensive; transportation problems were largely banished by the advent of the railroads in Arizona early in the 1880's; there was a good market; and foreign competition and governmental interference in industry still were years away. Yet the lack of modern technology in extractive mining and in milling counterbalanced all of these advantagesincluding the richness of the ore and made it difficult for most mines to show a profit.

The poor miner became the victim. With the closing of the silver mines in 1893, jobs in mines became hard to find. A great many experienced miners were wandering around the territory, willing to take whatever pay was offered and to turn in a full day's work and more just to get the price of a bed and a square meal. Naturally the bottom fell out of the wages offered, and that in itself was bad enough. But on top of it, mine management was having a hard time to show a profit, and unscrupulous and often incompetent managers were cutting every possible corner to save costs.

It costs money to timber a mine properly so as to insure the safety of the men in the mine. Timber was not exorbitantly expensive in Arizona; but it didn't take one cold-blooded manager long to realize "men were cheaper than timbers" and to express his sentiments exactly that way. His phrase became the ignoble motto of the era, and an uncounted number of men were killed by cave-ins in Arizona mines of the day. One mine manager said he was constantly working with three shifts of men: one actually in the mine, one departing and one just arriving. Theusual stay of a miner at one mine averaged about ten days, the time it took him to gather the minimum grubstake he needed to wander forth and look for a better job. That is, it was the average time for those who survived to move on.

These abuses existed principally in the gold mines, to only a much lesser extent in the copper mines. The reason is traceable directly to the ancient glamour of get-rich-quick gold. Old Phyneas T. Barnum had only been in his grave two years before a fantastic interlude in Arizona mining proved the truth of his famous remark that there is a sucker born every minute. The demonetization of silver in 1893 was one of the factors that helped plunge the country into a major economic depression. Oddly, history shows frequently it is at such times that glib confidence men make their biggest hauls. Perhaps it is that people who have seen their investments or incomes dwindle unaccountably feel Fate owes them something for nothing to compensate.

At any rate, 1893 ushered in the great gold mine promotion era in Arizona. The success of the Vulture and the Congress, plus the fruitful development of the Gold Road, Crown King, Octave, Fortuna, King of Arizona and others seem to have convinced - with no little help from the promoters--the unwary in the East that Arizona's hillsides and streambeds were strewn with gold just waiting to be picked up. There is no way of estimating how much the suckers were bilked of, but it is certain the total ran into many millions. By 1894 there were some 400 gold mines in Arizona making at least token production, while undoubtedly there were as many more Arizona companies in existence which never produced an ounce. Some of the brochures issued by these fraudulent concerns are almost unbelievable. For instance, One designed to sell stock in a company which claimed to have gold mines in Yavapai County showed on its cover a picture of a steamship loading ore at a large dock on the broad, deep waters of the Hassayampa River. It gave the distinct impression that ships like Great Lakes ore carriers could ply an almost dry creek bed. Obviously, if such companies were to make even Please turn to page thirty-two