AGGREGATED WEALTH.
In the California ground the bonanza extends through to the Ophir, the
next mine north, and by the cross-cuts run into it every one hundred
feet, it is shown to be—as far as explored—fron one hundred and fifty to
two hundred and fifty feet in width, and everywhere are found the rich
chloride and sulphuret ores. At the present writing (August 1875,) no
ore has been extracted from the California, except that taken out in
running drifts and cross-cuts. The ground, however, as far as developed,
has been laid off in large blocks by means of drifts and cross-cuts,
therefore is ready to be mined whenever it is necessary to extract ore
for reduction, which will be whenever the company’s new mill is
completed.
In the California ground are found the same nests of stephanite and
other extraordinarily rich ores as are seen in the Consolidated Virginia
mine. While these form no large part of the bonanza, they are
sufficiently large and numerous to very materially swell the average
value of the deposit.
The Consolidated Virginia Company extracts five hundred tons of ore per
day. This is the average daily yield from all parts of the mine—from the
1500-foot level, and from the levels above. Although much of the ore
from the upper levels is of low grade, yet the whole averages $100 per
ton in the mills. The yield of the mine has regularly been $50,000 per
day, or from $1,500,000 to $1,600,000 per month ever since the work of
reaching ore from the bonanza began. Much of the ore on the 1500-foot
level is too rich to be economically worked alone by pan process,
therefore it is mixed with poorer ore from certain parts of the upper
levels. Much more than 500 tons of ore per day might be extracted were
it necessary, but that is all that is required to keep the mills of the
company in operation.
Opened as it now is, there can easily be extracted from the California
mine as many tons of ore per day as are being taken out of the
Consolidated Virginia, and ore that will average even higher, as the
upper levels of the California are all intact. There is not the
slightest doubt that when the California mill shall be started up, these
two mines will produce $3,000,000 per month, or $36,000,000 per year;
and not for one or two, but for many years—ten years at least, in which
time would be extracted $360,000,000. A single foot of ground taken out
across the whole width of the bonanza in its widest part would contain a
fortune for any man of moderate desires. Should we go into the centre of
the Consolidated Virginia ground and take a slice from the bonanza 250
feet in width and extending one level below and two levels above the
1500-foot level we should then have a section of ore 300 feet long, 250
feet in width, and one foot thick. This would contain 75,000 cubic feet,
and containing thirteen cubic feet to the ton would weigh a trifle over
5,769 tons, which at $100 per ton would amount to $576,900 for a single
slice of the bonanza one foot in width. By continuing to cut off such
slices until we had reached the California line—say 230 feet—we should
have in all $132,687,000.
At a time when the Consolidated Virginia mine was much less extensively
developed than at present, Mr. I. E. James, a mining engineer who has
been engaged on the Comstock for many years, made an estimate of the ore
contained in the mine at the time. He took from the working plans of the
mines the actual length of each drift and the cross-cuts measured by
sections, and measured all triangles separately. The winzes were
measured no lower than they had been sunk, and in no place did he
estimate ore which had not yet been opened. The amount of ore thus found
was 20,669,500 cubic feet. The usual calculation is thirteen cubic feet
of ore to the ton, but in order to make ample allowances for “horses”
and waste rock two feet were added and fifteen cubic feet reckoned to a
ton, giving 1,377,966 tons, which at $100 per ton amounts to
$137,796,600, and at $200, as many estimate, the average of the ore in
the bonanza proper, would amount to $275,593,200. Mr. James G. Fair,
superintendent of the mine, puts the cost of milling and mining at $17
per ton, but calling it $18, it cost to mine and mill the number of tons
mentioned $24,803,388. Subtracting this from the gross amounts at $100
and at $200 per ton, and dividing the product by the number of shares in
the mine, namely 108,000, and it is found that if the ore averages $100
per ton, each share of stock will receive in net dividends $1,046 and at
$200 per ton will receive $2,322 in dividends. The stock is selling at
about $400 per share, and a dividend of $10 per share $1,080,000 in all
is paid regularly every month.
Whatever amount of wealth there may be in the Consolidated Virginia and
California mines it is evident that their owners are quite confident
that they will continue to yield as at present for many years to come,
otherwise they would not expend money as lavishly as they are doing in
preparations for their long continued and more extensive working. They
are sinking a new and very large shaft 1000 feet east of the present
main shaft of the Consolidated Virginia, the machinery to be set up at
which will cost $200,000. Through a drift run from this shaft ore will
be extracted from both the California and the Consolidated Virginia
mines. The two companies are equally interested in the shaft. The new
mill being erected by the California Company will cost $400,000. The
mill containing the stamps will be near the mine, and the crushed ore as
it runs from the batteries will be conveyed in a flume to the pan-mill,
nearly half a mile below on Six-mile Cañon.
Besides these heavy expenditures the two companies have bought 12,000
acres of timber-land high in the Sierras, to which has been constructed
a flume through which to float wood, lumber, and timber, and the cost of
this flume (twenty-one miles in length) was $250,000. These grand and
expensive preparations show that the companies in question are but
getting ready to mine.
Notwithstanding that this Comstock bonanza is the largest and richest
deposit of silver in the world, none of the scientific men of America
have yet taken the trouble to visit and examine it. It has been visited
by many mining men from Europe, however. The majority of the European
visitors are Englishmen, though many Germans and Frenchman, and a few
Russians, have come to see and inspect this wonder of the modern mining
world. All these foreigners are not only astounded at the great size and
richness of the vein, but are also forced to admit that the mining and
milling machinery of Nevada is far superior to anything of the kind to
be found in Europe.
The northern extremity of the bonanza penetrates the Ophir ground where,
however, it as yet appears to be somewhat broken and is found to lie in
huge detached masses, between the 1300 and the 1600-foot levels. Much of
the ore found is exceedingly rich, carrying a large percentage of gold.
Stopes have been opened in several places in the Ophir, and ore is being
extracted at the rate of three hundred tons per day. Here, too, are
being made very extensive preparations for future mining operations.
Hoisting-machinery for the incline is being erected that will be capable
of sinking to the depth of 4,000 feet—well on toward a mile. Machinery
for the pumping from the same great depth is also being erected. Their
present greatest depth is 1700 feet, at which point they are drifting
for the vein. Their present shaft is on a line, north and south, with
the Consolidated Virginia, and Gould & Curry shafts, and is about one
thousand feet east of the old shaft, and the point where silver was
first discovered in 1859 by Pat M^cLaughlin and Peter O’Riley.
It is a circumstance worthy of note that fourteen years after the
discovery of silver, the big bonanza, the mammoth deposit of the lode,
should be found near where the first silver ore was turned up to the
light of day. About one thousand feet eastward from the spot where
O’Riley and M^cLaughlin first saw and wondered at the strange “blue
stuff” in the bottom of their rocker we now have the bonanza, a second
wonder. Still to the eastward one of these days a third will be found.
Out of the first bonanza, into the top of which O’Riley and M^cLaughlin
luckily struck their picks, was taken about $20,000,000 before the
deposit was exhausted; out of the Consolidated Virginia mine alone has
already been taken $15,500,000 and as yet they have hardly begun working
in real earnest. What they have worked out in the bonanza is as one room
to a whole block of buildings. In regard to what is still below, they
only know that at the greatest depth yet attained they still have the
same rich ore that is found on the 1500-foot level.
By referring to the map of the 1500-foot level it will be seen that the
Consolidated Virginia Company still have a great amount of unexplored
ground lying to the southward of where they have drifted and opened
stopes in the great ore-body. What is in the ground remains to be seen,
but undoubtedly it contains a vast amount of rich ore. As is to be seen,
the California Company have to the eastward a vast unexplored region
into which no less than five cross-cuts, one hundred feet apart, are
being extended. All of these are in ore of the richest character, and
the width of the bonanza at that point is likely to prove as great as at
cross-cut No. 2, in the Consolidated Virginia, namely eighteen or twenty
rods. To cut off and estimate “slices” through the whole length of the
California ground would count up more hundreds of millions of dollars
than I dare name. When the new mill of the California Company shall have
gone into operation, silver will be produced so rapidly, and in such
amount as to astonish the world, and may perhaps reduce the market value
of the metal. When they begin the work of extracting ore they will be
able to take out all that they can reduce in their own mill and as many
other mills as they can secure, whether the amount required be five
hundred or one thousand tons per day.
In the Mexican and Union Consolidated mines, lying just north of the
Ophir, the work of prospecting has but recently been commenced, yet very
promising assays are obtained. The Sierra Nevada mine, which lies next
to the Union Consolidated, on the north, has yielded a large amount in
gold from surface earth, and from decomposed rock and earth extracted a
short distance below the surface, but as yet nothing that could be
called a bonanza has been found. In the early days, about 1862, a great
deal of gold was extracted from the surface earth by washing with the
hydraulic apparatus, as the placer-mines of California are worked. As at
Gold Hill, and at the head of Six-mile Cañon were found great bonanzas
where were at first found gold-diggings on the surface; so the Sierra
Nevada Company may yet expect to find a bonanza in some part of the
large mountain on which their mine is located. To the eastward of the
mines in which is situated the big bonanza a score of new claims have
been located, and on many of these, machinery has been set up, and large
shafts are being rapidly sunk. A new bonanza is liable to be found in
this direction, as it is a part of the silver belt that has been but
little explored.
The excitement in regard to the grand development in the Consolidated
Virginia and California mines had the effect of sending up the price of
stocks along the whole line of the Comstock. Mines that could show no
manner of improvements in their prospects went up with the rest, under
the pressure of the excitement. The aggregate value of mines in Virginia
and Gold Hill districts, whose stocks are called in the San Francisco
Stock Board, was about $93,000,000 November 22, 1874. On the same day of
the following month their market value was as follows:
Andes, $250,000
Arizona and Utah, 18,000
Alpha, 159,000
American Flat, 240,000
Baltimore Consolidated, 450,000
Bacon, 240,000
Belcher, 5,720,000
Best & Belcher, 3,528,000
Bullion, 1,700,000
Caledonia, 520,000
California, 54,000,000
Chollar, 2,464,000
Confidence, 1,123,200
Consolidated Virginia, 54,000,000
Consolidated Gold Hill Quartz, 140,000
Crown Point, 5,200,000
Challenge, 600,000
Crown Point Ravine, 100,000
Dardanelles, 670,000
Eclipse, 250,000
Empire Mill, 800,000
Exchequer, 900,000
Globe, 25,000
Gould and Curry, 2,880,000
Hale and Norcross, 1,024,000
Imperial, 1,900,000
Julia, 210,000
Justice, 1,470,000
Kentuck, 660,000
Knickerbocker, 120,000
Kossuth, 216,000
Lady Washington, 75,000
Leo, 40,000
Mexican, 3,456,000
New York Consolidated, 144,000
Ophir, 18,900,000
Overman, 2,944,000
Rock Island, 125,000
Savage, 2,000,000
Segregated Belcher, 960,000
Silver Hill, 540,000
Sierra Nevada, 340,000
Succor, 114,000
Trench, 50,000
Union Consolidated, 1,400,000
Utah, 160,000
Whitman, 150,000
Woodville, 252,000
Yellow-Jacket, 1,920,000
—————————-
Total. $175,147,200
By the above it will be seen that the appreciation in the value of
forty-nine mines was over $82,000,000 in thirty days. Besides the mines
given in the above list there were a score more that have a market
value, all of which were more or less affected by the excitement, and
were bought by persons who not having money to purchase bonanza stocks
were yet determined to get into mines of some kind.
The body of ore in the California and Consolidated Virginia mines, known
as the “Big Bonanza” is by no means the only bonanza found on the
Comstock that was worth having. From the first Ophir bonanza was
extracted, all told, about $20,000,000; from the Savage, $15,750,000;
Hale & Norcross, $8,000,000; Chollar-Potosi, $16,000,000; Gould & Curry,
$15,550,000; Yellow-Jacket, $15,000,000; Crown Point, $20,000,000;
Belcher, $25,000,000; Overman, $3,000,000; Imperial, $2,500,000, and
many other mines sums running into millions, or well up in the hundreds
of thousands. The Belcher and Crown Point mines are still yielding about
500 tons of ore each per day. The Belcher mine has paid its stockholders
dividends to the amount of $14,135,000; the stockholders of the Crown
Point have received $11,588,000; the Consolidated Virginia has paid
$9,720,000; Chollar-Potosi, $3,080,000; Gould & Curry, $3,826,800; Hale
& Norcross, $1,598,000; Savage, $4,440,000; Yellow-Jacket, $2,184,000;
and many others sums ranging from fifty thousand to one million dollars.
There is, of course, a vast deal of money paid out in the shape of
assessments levied for the purpose of opening new mines, and sometimes
on mines already opened, when they get into a “bad streak”—are in
“borrasca”—but, taking all kinds of mines together, the dividends have
far exceeded the assessments. From first to last, on all the mines the
stock of which is bought and sold in the San Francisco Stock Board,
there have been levied assessments amounting to $54,258,500; showing a
balance of $28,256,708 in favor of the mines; there is also the present
market value of the mines to be taken into consideration, which is a
grand item.
The mines of the Comstock give life to the whole Pacific Coast, and are
the main-spring, so to speak, of all kinds of trades and every kind of
business. They furnish to the California mechanic that employment which
gives him his bread. The army of workmen of all kinds, who were employed
in the building of the famous Palace Hotel, of San Francisco, the
largest and most costly structure of the kind in the world, were all
paid with money taken out of the mines of the Comstock. Washoe money
also reared the Nevada Block, and scores more of the finest and most
costly buildings in San Francisco—buildings which are the pride of the
city.
All the foundries and machine-shops of San Francisco and other large
towns on the Pacific Coast are running day and night to fill orders from
Nevada for engines, boilers, pumps, and all manner of mining machinery;
but for the Washoe silver-mines nearly all the workmen employed in these
foundries and machine-shops would be obliged to migrate to some other
land. The ranchmen and fruit-growers of California would find times very
dull with them but for Nevada, as in the towns of the silver-mines, they
always find a market for all their products at high prices in ready
coin. Without the “big bonanza,” and the many other silver-mines of all
classes in Nevada, times would be very different from what they now are
in San Francisco, and, indeed, throughout California and over the whole
Pacific Coast.
The influence of the Washoe silver-mines does not stop on the Pacific
Coast, but extends throughout the United States and is also felt in
Europe. Not only are manufacturing establishments in California running
to fill orders for machinery for the mines of Nevada, but many
establishments in the Atlantic States and a few in European countries
are also at work on certain kinds of machinery required in the
silver-mines; as steel-wire cables, air-compressure power-drills, and
the like. Not alone to the deposit of ore in one or two mines, but to
the whole Comstock lode should be given the name of the “Big Bonanza.”
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