PRECIOUS METAL INDUSTRY IN THE UNITED STATES. 47
scientific training. The reduction of silver from its ores, on the other hand, requires in most cases not only the highest degree of technical and scientific knowledge and experience, but to render available any but exceptionally rich ores involves the expenditure of large capital in smelting plants, centrally situated and with easy and cheap railroad transportation to and from mining districts and coal fields.
The history of the development of unexplored regions rich in the {precious metals follows with comparative regularity certain general lines. Gold is first discovered in the sands of the streams, and if these lead to rich and readily accessible placer deposits, a "boom"-sets in and results in a very rapid increase in gold production, from the fact that large numbers, not necessarily expert miners, can work at them, and no great preliminary expenditure of capital is required. With the rapid exhaustion of the richer and more easily worked placers, many abandon mining altogether; others search for new fields and for the veins from which the gold has been derived, and deep mining gradually replaces placer mining. This, however, is of relatively slow development, requires outside capital, and is more dependent on transportation facilities. Production for a time falls off, and increases again with the discovery of rich mines and consequent attraction of outside capital, which itself increases transportation facilities. This increase inproduction is slower than that due to the discovery of virgin placers of unusual richness. The prospector, who usually gathers his knowledge of ores not from previous training but from practical experience in the field, searches first for the more readily recognizable gold ores and only as circumstances increase his knowledge for the more complicated and obscure silver-bearing ores. This progression is illustrated in the broad general features of production of the precious metals in the United States. When Whitney wrote his Metallic Wealth of the United States, in 1854, the financial conditions of the world were being seriously disturbed by the almost simultaneous development of the placer mines of California and Australia, which together had added at a bound $120,000,000 to the world's annual production of gold without any corresponding increase in the product of silver. At that ikaeand for many years afterwards there was "no proper silver mine" within our territory, and it is hardly to be wondered at that he considered, in the light of the world's experience up to that time, silver to be better adapted for a standard of value than gold, since it appeared to be less susceptible to violent fluctuations in its production.
The production of the precious metals in the United States during the decade 1850-'60 was practically all gold, averaging over $50,000,000 annually, and mo"stly derived from placers; while of the less than $100,000 average annual product of silver the greater part came from gold alloys.
In the early part of the decade 1860-'70 the gold product fell off to $40,000,000 but increased again to $50,000-,000 toward the end, the more
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