PLATINUM.
By David T. Day.
PRODUCT ION.
The production of platinum in the United States during 1904 was stimulated by a rise in price, amounting- to about 10 per cent and due principally to anxiety in regard to the fate of the platinum industry in Russia during the Russo-Japanese war. It should not be understood that the slight rise of 10 per cent in the price of platinum would serve as an}r great stimulus to the placer gold miners of the West who furnish the platinum products of the United States, for these miners are comparatively indifferent to a slight change in price. The scarcity of platinum, and the consequent rise in price, however, led to much energy on the part of eastern smelters in platinum in urging upon the placer miners of the West the advisability of saving platinum in cleaning up the hydraulic mines. The increase thus effected is interesting as showing what is possible in the United States in the future. The product of 110 ounces in 1903, valued at $2,080, increased to 200 ounces, valued at $4,160 in 1904, all from California and Oregon, inasmuch as operations have been suspended in the Rambler copper mine, Wyoming, which furnished some platinum the year before. The outlook for increased production for the year 1905 is good, not only on account of the continued high price of platinum but because of the investigation undertaken by the United States Geological Survey of the black sands of the Pacific slope and of the increased knowledge thus furnished to the miners in regard to the value of the platinum and to simpler means of saving it. A detailed report of this investigation will be included in the next volume of Mineral Resources of the United States.
A circular letter was addressed to all the placer miners of the United States inviting them to send to the Survey samples of the heavy sands which collect in the sluices. In response to this circular many specimens are under investigation, not only as to the quantity of gold and of platinum metals contained but as to the presence of other useful minerals. This work is under the direction of Prof. Robert H. Richards, of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Preliminary assays of some of these sands have already been completed.
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