MINES REPORT.
METHOD OF COLLECTING STATISTICS.
The
first table in this report presents the final official figures of the
production of gold and silver in the United States in 1914 as agreed
upon by the Bureau of the Mint and the United States GeologicafSur-vey.
With the comparatively unimportant exceptions of domestic gold and
silver contained in ores and mattes exported for reduction during the
year, these figures record the actual production of gold and silver
bullion from domestic ores in marketable form as metals, either refined
or unrefined.
Owing
to the difficulty of tracing this total gold and silver production
back to its origin by States, counties, and mining districts, however,
the Geological Survey attacks this problem of distribution by
systematic investigation of the mine production of ores containing gold
and silver during the calendar year and of the output of the placer
mines. In this way the state of the mining industry is studied in
detail, and classification of output by methods of production and by
kinds of ore, as well as by mining districts, is obtained. The
resulting figures form the basis of the mines report.
Of
the two plans outlined for ascertaining the gold and silver production
of the United States it may be said that the one is a measure of the
mining industry and the other a measure of the metallurgical industry;
and one reports the production and recoverable content of mine output
and the other the metal actually recovered in marketable form. The two
methods will not produce exactly corresponding results, nor should they
be expected to do so.
