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Ch. 1: Gold and Silver in 1921

Ch. 1: Gold and Silver in 1921 Page of 50 Ch. 1: Gold and Silver in 1921 Text size:minus plus Restore normal size   Mail page  Print this page
438                        MINERAL RESOURCES, 1921—PART I.
MINES REPORT. METHOD OF COLLECTING STATISTICS.
The first table below presents the final official figures of the pro­duction of gold and silver in the United States in 1921 as agreed upon by the Bureau of the Mint and the United States Geological Survey. 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 pro­duced back to its source 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 the output is classified by methods of produc­tion and by kinds of ore, as well as by mining districts. The resulting figures form the basis of the mines reports.
Of the two plans for ascertaining the gold and silver production of the United States one is a measure of the mining industry and the other a measure of the metallurgic industry; one reports the mine output and its recoverable content and the other the metal actually recovered in marketable form. The two methods will not produce exactly corresponding results,, but the figures for a period of years sufficiently long to compensate for overlap or lag should agree within allowable limits of error due to the complexity of the problem in­volved.
These figures show, according to the reports of the Mint, a total excess of gold for the 17 years of $12,383,454, or a difference of less than 0.9 per cent, and a total excess of silver of 6,331,297 ounces, or a difference of about 0.6 per cent. The figures for Alaska placers are not considered to be so closely approximate as the total figures for gold, hence the differences for the United States proper are probably even lower. It is thought that those small differences are fully accounted for in the detailed discussions of the subject in previous reports of this series. For any one year an excess of mining over
Ch. 1: Gold and Silver in 1921 Page of 50 Ch. 1: Gold and Silver in 1921
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US Geol. Surv. 1921. Gemstones, Metals.
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