THE YOUNG MINING ENGINEER
Herbert Hoover began his mining career very simply and practically by
taking his place as a real workman in a real mine, with no favors shown,
following in this the emphatic advice given by Dr. Branner to every
student graduating from his department. He went up into the mining
region near Grass Valley in the Sierras where he had already studied
with Waldemar Lindgren, and became a regular miner, a boy-man with pick
and shovel working long hours underground or sometimes on the surface
about the plant. But always he had his eyes wide open and always he was
learning. He preferred the underground work because he wanted first to
know more about the actual occurrence of the ore in the earth than about
the mill processes of extracting the mineral from it.
Here he worked for several months, and gradually rose to the position of
night shift-boss or gang foreman. But he began to realize that he was
exhausting the learning opportunities of this particular place and kind
of work, and so one night deep down in the mine, when for sudden lack of
ore-cars or power or some other essential, work was held up for the last
half hour of his shift, he went off into a warm corner, curled himself
up in a nice clean wheelbarrow and slept away the last half hour of his
pick and shovel experience.
He had decided to get into association, some way, with the best mining
engineer on the Coast. There was no question about who this was at that
time. It was Louis Janin in San Francisco. So he appeared at Mr. Janin's
office as a candidate for a job, any job so that it was a job under
Louis Janin.
But the famous engineer, well disposed as he was toward giving
intelligent, earnest young men who wanted to become mining engineers, a
chance, had to explain that not only was there no vacant place in his
staff but that a long waiting list would have to be gone through before
Hoover's turn could come. He added, as a joke, that he needed an
additional typist in his office, but of course----. The candidate for a
job interrupted. "All right, I'll take it. I can't come for a few days,
but I'll come next Tuesday, say." Janin was a little breathless at the
rapidity with which things seemed to get settled by this boyish, very
boyish, young man, but as they were apparently really settled he could
only say, "All right."
Now the reason that the new typewriter boy could not begin until next
Tuesday--this was on a Friday--was that he had in the meantime to learn
to write on a typewriter! Trivial matter, of course, in connection with
becoming a mining engineer, but apparently necessary. So learning what
make of machine he would have to use in the office, he stopped, on his
way to his room, at a typewriter shop, rented a machine of proper make,
and by Tuesday had learned to use it--after a fashion.
That kind of boy could not remain for long a typist in the office of a
discerning man like Louis. Perhaps certain idiosyncrasies of spelling
and a certain originality of execution on the machine helped bring about
a change of duties. But chiefly it was because of a better reason. This
reason was made especially clear by an incident connected with an
important mining case in which Janin was serving as expert for the side
represented by Judge Curtis Lindley, famous mining lawyer of San
Francisco. The papers which indicated the line of argument which Judge
Lindley and Mr. Janin were intending to follow came to Hoover's desk to
be copied. As he wrote he read with interest. The mine was in the Grass
Valley region that he knew so well. He not only copied but he remembered
and thought. The result was that when the typewriter boy delivered the
papers to the mining engineer they were accompanied by the casual
statement that the great expert and the learned attorney were all wrong
in the line of procedure they were preparing to take! And he proceeded
to explain why, first to Mr. Janin's indignant surprise but next to his
great interest, because the explanation involved the elucidation of
certain geologic facts not yet published to the world, which the
typewriter boy had himself helped to discover during his work in the
Grass Valley region.
The outcome was that Janin and his new boy went around together to Judge
Lindley's office where after due deliberation the line of argument was
altered. The further result was that the boy parted from his typewriter,
first to begin acting as assistant to various older staff men on trips
to various parts of the Coast for mine examinations, then to make minor
examinations alone, and finally to handle bigger ones. The letters from
the young mining engineer to the girl of the geology department, still
at Stanford, came now in swift succession from Nevada, Wyoming, and
Idaho, and then very soon after from Arizona and New Mexico. Little
mines did not require much time for examination and reports signed
"Hoover" came into Janin's office with bewildering rapidity. Janin liked
these reports; they not only showed geological and mining knowledge, but
they showed a shrewd business sense. The reporter seemed never to lose
the perspective of cost and organization possibilities in relation to
the probable mineral richness of the prospects. And the reports said
everything they had to say in very few and very clear words.
Herbert Hoover was not only moving fast; he was learning fast, and he
was rising fast in Janin's estimation. He had a regular salary or
guarantee now with a certain percentage of all the fees collected by
Janin's office from the properties he examined. What he was earning now
I do not know, but we may be sure it was considerably more than the
forty-five dollars a month which he had begun with as typewriter boy, a
few months before.
The work was not entirely limited to the examination of prospects and
mines. In one case at least it included actual mine development and
management. Mr. Janin had in some way taken over, temporarily--for such
work was not much to his liking: he preferred to be an expert consultant
rather than a mine manager--a small mine of much value but much
complication near Carlisle, New Mexico. This he turned over to his
enterprising assistant to look after.
It was Hoover's first experience of the kind, and it was made a rather
hectic one by conditions not technically a regular part of mining. The
town, or "camp," was a wild one with drunken Mexicans having
shooting-bees every pay day and the local jail established at the bottom
of an abandoned shaft, not too deep, into which the prisoners were let
down by windlass and bucket. It was an operation fairly safe if the
sheriff and his assistants were not too exhilarated to manage the
windlass properly, or the malefactors, too drunk to hang on to the
bucket. Otherwise, more or less regrettable incidents happened. Also, it
led to a rather puzzling situation when the sheriff had to take care of
his first woman prisoner, a negro lady of generous dimensions and much
volubility.
But the mine was well managed and Hoover acquired more merit with his
employer. And soon came the new chance which led to much bigger things.
It was now the spring of 1897, two years after Hoover's graduation, and
the time of the great West Australia mining boom. English companies were
sending out many engineers, old and young, to investigate and handle
mining properties in the new field, and were looking everywhere for
competent men. Janin was asked by one of these London firms to recommend
someone to them. He talked it over with Hoover, telling him that it
might be a great opportunity. It might, of course, not be; it would
depend on the prospect--and the man who handled it. Janin expressed his
entire confidence in the young man before him, and his belief that the
opportunity was greater than any the Pacific Coast then had to offer. He
would be more than glad to keep Hoover with him, but he wanted to be
fair to him and his future. The young man was all for giving hostages to
fortune, and so the recommendation, the offer, and the acceptance flew
by cable between San Francisco and London, and Hoover prepared to start
at once to England for instructions, as had been stipulated in the
offer.
Just before he started, however, Janin caused him some uneasiness by
saying, "Now look here, Hoover, I have cabled London swearing to your
full technical qualifications, and I am not afraid of your letting me
down on that. But these conservative Londoners have stipulated that you
should be thirty-five years old. I have wired that I was sorry to have
to tell them that you are not quite thirty-three. Don't forget that my
reputation depends on your looking thirty-three by the time you get to
London!" And Hoover had not yet reached his twenty-third birthday, and
looked at least two years younger even than that. He began growing a
beard on his way across the continent.
The London firm had stipulated, too, that their new man should be
unmarried. Hoover was still that, although he had begun to get impatient
about what seemed to him an unnecessary delay in carrying out his
decision already made in college. As a matter of fact, there was still
no definite engagement between him and the girl of the geology
department, but there was an informal understanding that some day there
might be a formal one. So Hoover appeared before the head of the great London house--perhaps
the greatest mining firm in the world at that time--without encumbering
wife and with the highest of recommendations, but with a singularly
youthful appearance for an experienced mining engineer of thirty-five.
In fact, the great man after staring hard at his new acquisition burst
out with English directness, "How remarkable you Americans are. You have
not yet learned to grow old, either individually or as a nation. Now
you, for example, do not look a day over twenty-five. How the devil do
you do it?"
The days were days of wonder for the homegrown young Quaker engineer.
Across America, across the ocean, then the stupendous metropolis of the
world and the great business men of the "city," with week-ends under the
wing of the big mining financier at beautiful English country houses
with people whose names spelled history. And then the P. and O. boat to
Marseilles, Naples, Port Said, Aden, and Colombo, and finally to be put
ashore in a basket on a rope cable over a very rough sea at Albany in
West Australia. There he was consigned, with the dozen other first-class
passengers, mining adventurers like himself, to quarantine in a tent
hospital on a sand spit out in the harbor with the thermometer never
registering below three figures, even at night.
And then he came to the Australian mine fields themselves in a desert
where the temperature can keep above one hundred degrees day and night
for three weeks together. Also there is wind, scorching wind carrying
scorching dust. And surface water discoverable only every fifty or sixty
miles. Of course one expects a desert to be hot and dry--that's why it
is a desert--but the West Australian desert rather overemphasizes the
necessities of the case. It is a deadly monotonous country although not
wholly bare; there is much low brush just high enough to hide you from
others only half a mile away; a place easy to get lost in, and hard to
get found in when once lost.
All of this desert was being prospected by thousands of men of a dozen
nationalities, all seeking and suffering, for gold. The railroad had got
in only as far as Coolgardie, but the prospectors were far beyond the
rail head. They carried their water bags with enough in them to keep
themselves and their horses alive between water holes. In the real "back
blocks" they could not carry enough for horses, so they used camels
with jangling bells and gaudy trappings of gay greens, orange, scarlet,
and vivid blues, making strange contrasts with the blue-gray bush. Along
the few main roads moved dusty stages, light, low, almost spring-less
three-seated vehicles, with thin sun-tops overhead and boxes and bags in
front, behind and underneath, and all swarmed about by pestilential
flies, millions of flies, sprung from nowhere to harass the thirsty,
weary travelers.
But only the agents and engineers rode in the stages; it cost too much
for the little prospectors, the "dry-washers," who carried their few
provisions and scanty outfit in packs on their backs, and tramped the
trails, stopping here and there to toss the dry soil into the air and
watch for the gold flakes to fall into the pan while the lighter earth
blew off in the wind.
In the camp were gathered a motley crew, mostly hard, reckless men, who
drank and bet their gold dust away as fast as they found it. But
everywhere they were finding gold, and all the time came new reports and
rumors of more farther on. The headquarters of Hoover's employers were
in Coolgardie when he arrived, but were soon moved on to Kalgoorlie,
following the railroad. The offices were in one of the three or four
stone, two-story buildings, which lifted themselves proudly above the
ruck of sweltering little toy-like houses of corrugated iron. Forty
thousand people were supposed to be living in this "camp" at one time,
buying water at two shillings six pence the gallon, which was
cheap--they were paying seven shillings in some other camps. At first it
was all brought by rail from the coastal plains four hundred miles away,
but when the mines began to get down they struck water at a few hundred
feet. But it was salt, and expensive condensing plants had to be set up,
which kept the price still high. Coolgardie once boasted of having the
"biggest condensing plant in the world," with rows on rows of enormous
cylindrical corrugated iron tanks lying on their sides, over acres of
ground, with all the pumps and boilers and steam pipes to keep these
tanks supplied. Water was cheap there, only twelve or fifteen shillings
the hundred gallons.
But out in the prospects and on the trails there was no such aqueous
luxury. There was no water for washing and little to drink. And that
little was mostly drunk as a terrible black tea, like lye, heated and
re-heated, with now a little more water added, now another handful of
leaves. I have a well-vouched-for story of an Australian girl who went
into this gold-paradise with her husband who was manager, at a large
salary, of one of the first mines. She used to take a cupful of water
and carefully wash the baby and afterward the little girl, and then
herself. After that it was saved for the husband to rinse the worst off
when he came home from the mine. But he could have an additional half
cup to finish with because he was so dirty. And they tried not to use
soap with it so that finally, after letting it settle, it could be added
to the horses' drinking water. It was not that the family could not
afford to pay for water, but there was simply no water to buy.
Into this cheerful hell came the young Quaker engineer, from the heaven
of California and the "city" offices of London where sat the big men
who were intent on having their share of the big things in West
Australia. He was to do his best for his particular big men, but how he
was to do it was mostly for him to find out. His firm had already
acquired interests in several promising properties. He was to help
develop these mines and perhaps to find new ones to be taken on. A
junior member of his firm was already on the ground when Hoover arrived,
but he remained only a few months. It was a long way to London and
Hoover could get few instructions. It was up to him. It was a hard life
with many opportunities to go wrong in any of many ways. But he kept his
brain clear, his body and soul clean, and just everlastingly worked.
There were all kinds of work to do, and all sorts of new things to learn
about mines and mining. The ore occurred in the rock in a manner
different from that in any other known gold field, so finding it and
getting it out, and then getting the mineral out of the strange new kind
of ore, required resourcefulness, "original research," as the scientists
say, and constructive imagination. And the technical problems of
discovering and manipulation once solved, there was still needed
organization, system, and administration to make the mine a paying one.
But all these things were exactly the young engineer's specialties. He
was from the beginning, as we already know, and conspicuously is today,
resourceful, original, capable of prompt decision, an organizer and
administrator. Although there were many trained engineers in West
Australia, there was no one to equal him in these specialties of his.
And very soon his firm's mines, which had so far had little benefit of
executive ability coupled with technical knowledge and originality,
began to pay and their stocks went up on the London market--which was
the criterion of success in the eyes of the men in the "city." About the
stock ratings Hoover knew little and perhaps cared less. He did care,
however, about making good mines out of bad ones. And that was exactly
what he was doing.
And very soon he did the other successful thing that the big men in
London hoped for and that he kept always working for. He uncovered the
big new mine. He had turned up several promising leads but their
development proved disappointing. But the "Sons of Gwalia" realized his
hopes from the beginning. It was out from Kalgoorlie four or five days
hard riding, near a smaller camp called Leonora. He went out and took
personal charge of the opening up and equipping of the whole mine and
plant, living in a little "tin" house and gathering about him a staff of
the best of the firm's assistants collected from all over the Colony. It
was hot, although the climbing mercury usually stopped at about one
hundred degrees. But that only further inflamed the enthusiasm of the
group. They had the real thing, and they had a real leader--a very
boyish looking boy of scant twenty-five. They forgot to watch the
thermometer. They were more interested in water and transportation and
labor and all the other things that are as necessary to a good mine as
the gold in the ore-veins.
Occasionally, however, they had some relaxation. For one thing, they
thought sometimes about food. One of the men had his wife with him, and
she imported chickens and later even ducks which never, however, set
web-foot in water. And they had a garden because they decided they were
so in need of green vegetables. They turned a little priceless water
from the condenser into the garden; but not enough for the vegetables
and too much for the accountant's books. After estimating that the one
undersized cabbage they raised cost them L65 worth of water, he
discouraged further gardening.
They had also a pet emu. So did the wife of the manager of another mine
near-by. They used to arrange to have the emus meet occasionally and
there was always a glorious fight. Once when they had got the lady's emu
over for a visit, one of the Australian boys thought it would look
amusing in trousers. So he took off his overalls and after immense
exertion got them on the legs of the creature, with the straps securely
fastened over its neck and back. But the great bird became so enraged
that the men could not safely get near enough to it to get off its
clothing, and even its mistress feared ever to approach it again. There
was also a pet goat named Sydney that ate several boxes of matches and
had to have its internal fires extinguished by the only available
liquid, which was the tinned butter that had yielded to the one hundred
and ten degrees. Sydney lived through the experience but had always
after that a delicate interior and was petted more than ever in
consequence. And there was a tennis court occasionally wetted down with
the beer that always went stale while they were saving it for state
occasions. It was all a happy, glorious time--because they had
discovered and were making one of the great mines of West Australia.
Hoover was now twenty-four, and a man of large reputation in mining
circles in Australia and London, with a salary to correspond. He had
spent about twenty-four months in West Australia, although they ran over
all of one and parts of two other years, so that he is generally
credited with having remained there three years. And he could have gone
on among the Australian mines for as many years as he liked, for the big
men in London now fully realized that they had in this young American
engineer the unusual man, and that his only limit in Australia would be
the limit of the possible. But the new opportunity and the new
experience were calling.
Just about this time a young Chinaman of royal family in Peking had made
a successful _coup d'etat_ and had formed a cabinet for the first time
in the history of China, and this cabinet decided, naturally also for
the first time in the history of China, to effect a cooerdinated control
of all the mines of the Empire. There was, therefore, established a
Department of Mines, with a wily old Chinaman, named Chang Yen Mow, at
its head. He understood that Chinamen knew little about mining, and
hence decided to find a foreigner to help him manage the mines of the
Empire. He also thought that a foreigner, thus attached as an official
to his department, could be of particular help to him in dealing with
other foreigners inclined to exploit Chinese mines more for their own
benefit than China's. This official was to be in a position much like
that of an undersecretary in a cabinet department, and was to be given
the title, in the Chinese equivalent, of "Director-General of Mines."
He was to have a salary appropriate to such a large title. With all this
decided, it only remained to find the proper foreigner, who should be a
man who knew much about mines and was honest. There was, as we know,
just such a man in Western Australia.