Efficiency-Engineering Applied To Mining.

(Presented at a Meeting of the Spokane Local Section of the Institute, Feb. 17, 1912, and accepted for publication in the Bulletin. ) WHILE I am not at the present time engaged in active mine-management, my duties permit of extensive study and examination of many mines, mills, and reduction-works in various places throughout the United States. Being much interested in efficiency-work in general, and an ardent reader of writings on this subject by Frederick W. Taylor and others, as applied to manufacturing-plants, and having served my apprenticeship from mucking to the engineering design of ore-dressing and underground plants, I hope that this paper will lead others to investigate the field more fully, to the improvement of general mine- and mill-operations, as well as the advancement, intellectually, physically, and financially, of the employee and his relations with the employer. If a man who is prepared to look closely and observe broadly starts in Canada and zig-zags from camp to camp to southern Mexico, taking time casually to inspect mines, mills, and smelters, he will be pitifully impressed by the great difference in customs, and the general waste of labor, time, and money throughout the country. He will so seldom observe a dollar's worth of results given in exchange for a dollar spent that he will form a poor opinion of operating-efficiency and management. This highly-scientific department, requiring an amount of skill and executive ability equaled in few, if any, of the professions, certainly falls short of the standard established in our greater manufacturing industries. It is easily said that this is due to the diversity of conditions in mining, milling, and smelting. But on second view it must be admitted that there is room for tremendous improvements in nearly every mining-organization. The proposal of such improvements is often met by the argument that any mine