GOLD AND SILVER.
By William Kent.
Early
in the year 1890 the annual report of the Director of the Mint was
published on the production of the precious metals in the United States
during the calendar year 1889, in which he gave, according to the usual
custom in these annual reports, his estimates of the production of
gold and silver in the several States and Territories. These estimates
are based upon the figures reported to the Director by private
refineries, upon deposits of refined and unrefined metal at the
several mints and assay offices, upon returns from the custom-houses
of the precious metals exported and imported, and to some extent upon
the estimates made by mint officers and agents in the several producing
States and Territories.
A
direct investigation of the product of the gold and silver mines in
1889 was made in 1890 for the Eleventh Census of the United States by
Mr. E. P. Eothwell, special agent of the Census Office, in charge of
the statistics of gold and silver mines, with whom the writer was
associated as principal assistant. The work was begun in the latter
part of 1889 by obtaining from all available sources a directory of
producing mines, and early in 1890 the collection of schedule
statistics was undertaken, both by the use of the mails and by the
efforts of numerous special agents in the field, several of whom were
also agents of the mint.
The
methods of collection and of compilation adopted by the Census Office
are given in detail in the report of the special agent and need not be
described here, but it is sufficient to say that the results reached
are unquestionably more accurate, as might have been expected from the
facilities availed of, than the figures of any previous census or mint
report. The difference between the mint and census figures is but
trifling in the case of gold, but it is considerable in the case of
silver, both as regards the total xnoduct and as regards the
distribution among the States and Territories. Thus the total product
of silver according to the mint (United States coining value) was
$64,646,000 and according to the census $66,396,988. The product of
Colorado according to the mint was $20,686,868 and according to the
census $23,757,751, a difference of over $3,000,000. For the reasons
above given the figures of the census are adopted here for the
production of gold and silver in 1889, For 48
