IMPORTS AND EXPORTS. The following table gives a summary of imports and exports of gold and silver during 1909: Imports and exports of gold and silver during the calendar year 1909. The imports came from many countries in Central and South America, from Japan and Australia, and even from Europe, but the great bulk of the imported gold and silver came from Mexico and Canada. In 1909, according to the Bureau of Statistics, Mexico sent to this country gold valued at $7,587,090 in ore and base bullion and at $14,015,453 in refined bullion-a total value in gold of $21,602,543; and silver valued at $17,926,986 in ore and base bullion and $9,823,580 in refined bullion-a total value in silver of $27,750,566. During the same year Nova Scotia, New Brunswick, and Prince Edward Island sent to this country gold valued at $58,122 in ore and base bullion and at $68,122 in refined bullion; Quebec, Ontario, Manitoba, etc., sent gold valued at $198,905 in ore and base bullion and at $3,867,839 in refined bullion, and silver valued at $9,929,401 in ore and base bullion and at $507,884 in refined metal; and British Columbia sent gold valued at $4,213,139 in ore and base bullion and at $1,364,749 in refined bullion, and silver valued at $650,148 in ore and base bullion. The total imports from Canada were gold valued at $9,770,876 and silver valued at $11,087,433. MINES REPORT. METHOD OF COLLECTING STATISTICS. The first table given in this report presents the figures of production of gold and silver accepted as final by the Geological Survey, as, with the relatively unimportant exceptions of domestic gold and silver in ores, mattes, etc., exported for reduction during the year, they record the actual production of gold and silver bullion in marketable form as metals, either refined or unrefined. Owing to the impossibility of tracing this bullion back to its origin by States, counties, and mining districts, the Geological Survey attacks the problem of distribution by systematic investigation of the production of ores containing gold and silver during the calendar year, by mines and by placer output. In this way the state of the mining industry is studied in detail, and classification of output by methods of production and classes of ore by mining districts is obtained. The resulting figures form the basis of the mines report. As already stated, the Bureau of the Mint takes into account, as the basis for statistics of production, the gold and silver in gold bullion deposited in the United States mints and assay offices, in fine bars of both metals reported by private refineries, and in ores, mattes, etc., exported for reduction." The data for the Geological Survey mines report on the output of gold and silver may be classified as follows: (1) Gold and silver in placer nuggets, dust, and bullion; (2) gold and silver in mill bullion from mills of mine companies treating their own ores; (3) gold and silver in base bullion, matte, etc. (by assay value), from smelters of mine companies treating their own ores; (4) gold and silver in crude ore and concentrates (by assay value) shipped to custom mills and smelters all four of these items being for gravel washed, or ore sold or treated, during the calendar year. The first item is the simple case of native metal recovered and sold to government mints, assay offices, refineries, banks, and traders. It is not difficult to obtain accurate figures for this except in some parts of Alaska, or in the cases of transitory miners elsewhere, or when miners report value received for bullion only-for all of which cases, however, Survey estimates are found to be usually close. The second and third items cover metal production by mining companies whose mills and smelters treat their own ores and whose products go to the mints and refineries and are covered by confidential mine reports to the Survey. The fourth item, which covers raw products of the mine shipped for treatment, gives rise to the main apparent discrepancies between mine and mint-refinery reports on the production of precious metals for the same calendar year. This is readily understood from the fact that the interval of time between the disposal by shipment of ore as reported from the mines and the arrival and metallurgical treatment of it at the mills or smelters, followed by the refining of the products of the same ore, means annually that large quantities of metals in ores reported from the mines as shipped in one year will be reported by refineries as produced in the following year. The miners furnish the Geological Survey with confidential reports on assay values and tonnages of ores and concentrates shipped as the measure of their output and the smelters and refineries report the metals eventually produced in both their unrefined and refined state. In using this mines report it should be remembered that tonnages and production given are not for ore mined, but for ore that is sold or treated during the calendar year. Of course most of the ore sold or treated is also mined during the same year, but some of it is necessarily mined during the preceding year. It must not be overlooked, also, that the mines report is not based on the assay value of the total tonnage, but aims to give, as far as possible, the metal recovery from the tonnage sold or treated during the calendar year. A part of the actual recovery is of course made during the early part of the following year in the case of ores sold or treated late in the year under review; but the basis of the report is essentially metal recovered at whatever time from tonnage sold or treated during the year covered by the report. For items 2 and 3, above, the recovery figures are easily had, as the ore is treated on the ground and the metal content of the bullion, either base or unrefined, is readily known. In item 3 the refining loss and in item 4 the combined smelting and refining losses must be taken into account, but in the cases of the precious metals these are known to be very small and in actual practice to be more than offset by certain gains. These gains are of small quantities of precious metals, not paid for but actually recovered from ores of copper, lead, and zinc, and certain differences in quantities of gold and silver between actual recovery and basis of settlement, silver being paid for on the basis of 95 per cent of the current New York price and gold at from $19 to $20 per ounce. From this it is seen that small producers, frequently reporting in terms of dollars, will be giving figures below actual final production of metal, and if they erroneously report net proceeds, as they sometimes do, their figures are still further below. Other gains, offsetting refining and smelting losses, are the relatively small amounts of precious metals, principally gold, not regularly reported from the mines, but coming from transitory placer mines whose production escapes estimates; from stolen ore treated in improvised "assay offices;" and from smelter and refinery cleanings and similar material. Although mine reports in the aggregate may appear to give figures of gold and silver production too high, therefore, it is known from actual practice that final recoveries are somewhat in excess of those estimated from tonnages of the mines. COMPARISON OF MINT REPORT AND MINES REPORT. Of the two plans outlined above for ascertaining the gold and silver production of the United States it may be said that the one is a measure more directly of the mining industry, the other of the results of the metallurgical side. The two methods will not produce exactly corresponding results nor should they be expected to do so. The calendar year covered by both investigations is the same, but the period of mine production naturally corresponds to a period earlier by the time necessary for transporting, sampling, and treating the ore and refining the products than the period covered by actual production of marketable metal. This period is practically negligible in the case of placer and mill bullion, but may be several months in the case of smelting ores. In this connection it may be stated that forthcoming reports of the Bureau of the Census for the metal production of 1909 may be expected to show divergence of results for still another period, as the census returns are accepted for the fiscal years of the operating companies which in many cases do not coincide with calendar years. The figures obtained for the mint and the mines reports should agree, within certain limits of error due to the complex nature of the inquiries especially for mine production, for a period of years sufficiently long to compensate for overlap or lag. The figures of the mines report may be expected to fall normally below those of the mint report for reasons outlined, and also because of the difficulty in many cases for the mint report of completely separating figures for foreign metal treated in large amount in domestic plants. For the last five years the final figures from mint and mine returns have been as follows: Production of gold and silver, 1905–1909, according to mint and to mine returns. These figures show an excess of gold according to mint reports for the five years of $3,019,503, or a difference of a little over 0.6 per cent and a corresponding excess of silver production of 1,967,628 fine ounces, or a difference of about 0.7 per cent. As figures for Alaska are not claimed to be much closer than 3 per cent, the differences for the United States proper are even lower. It is thought these relatively small differences may be accounted for by the explanation already given. Excess of mining over smelting and refining whether of gold and silver or of base metal ores or both, is indicated by larger figures in mine reports for gold or silver or both; and normal conditions, or perhaps excess of smelting and refining over mining by drawing upon stocks, is suggested by the reverse. It may be repeated that the study of production of metals from mixed ores in the West is full of difficulties owing to the complex nature of the problem; but the Survey is confident from field investigations that the results are of increasing accuracy, especially in States like Colorado, where the situation yields satisfactory results only after most painstaking effort and detailed work. UNITS OF MEASUREMENTS. Gold and silver are measured by the fine ounce. In the computing tables prepared by the Bureau of the Mint and the Geological Survey gold is given as valued at $20.671834625323 per fine ounce. The average commercial price in New York for silver in 1909 is taken as 52 cents per fine ounce. The standard Survey unit for ore production is the short ton of 2,000 pounds. PRODUCTION OF GOLD AND SILVER REPORTED FROM THE MINES. The following table gives the quantity and the value of gold and silver reported from the producing mines in 1909 to the United States Geological Survey. The increase or decrease of production shown 97547°-M R 1909, PT 1-9 results from comparison with the corresponding mines reports as published in Mineral Resources for 1908: Mine production of gold and silver in the United States in 1909 as reported to the United States Geological Survey, by States and Territories, in fine ounces. An increase in production of gold valued at $7,523,256 and of 6,437,534 fine ounces of silver is shown by the mines report for the United States for 1909, as compared with the corresponding figures for 1908. The production was contributed by 26 States and Territories and by Porto Rico and the Philippines. In output of gold the principal producers ranked as follows: Colorado, Alaska, California, Nevada, South Dakota, Utah, Montana, Arizona, and Idaho, or in the same relative order as in 1908. No other State or Territory produced as much as $1,000,000 in gold. The most notable increases in output are seen to be for Nevada, $4,877,022; for California, $1,476,311; and for Alaska, $1,118,898. The heaviest decrease was in South Dakota, $1,079,540. In output of silver the principal producers ranked as follows: Montana, Utah, Nevada, Colorado, Idaho, Arizona, and California, the only change since 1908 being that Utah has moved from fourth to second place, sending Nevada and Colorado down one place each. The conspicuous increases in silver production in 1909 as compared with the output for 1908 were: 3,265,834 ounces in Utah, 2,022,515 ounces in Montana, and 1,472,597 ounces in Nevada. Although 17 States and Territories had decreased mine production of silver, the largest decreases were of 428,348 ounces in Idaho and 207,289 ounces in Arizona. In no other State was the decrease as high as 70,000 ounces. |