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By E. J. Eisenach, W. E. Jones

SAFETY and industrial hygiene have always been recognized as highly important in company policy, and the co-operative support of the company officials and entire plant personnel has contributed largely to the present success of the Company's program in this field. Growth has necessarily been slow, and dependent, at times, on trial and error but the program in its present form combines the regulations, working methods, and equipment that have proved their value under actual operating conditions. Every effort is made to keep the program on a practical basis. Continuous experimental work is carried on in conjunction with the health and safety program, with resultant periodic changes for improvement. As a proof of accomplishment, in 1945 the frequency and severity rates for accidents were the lowest in the history of the operation. A full-time safety engineer was employed in 1933 and an assistant safety engineer in 1936. During the following year a stenographer was employed in the office and a safety inspector was added for the mine. During the gradual expansion of operations that was climaxed by

Jan 1, 1946

By L. S. Cates

THE war is now behind us. We in the mining industry feel a just pride in the part that our industry and our men and our products played in defeating the enemy on the fighting fronts around the world. In five years of mobilization and actual combat, our mines and oil wells produced over 3 billion tons of coal, a billion tons of petroleum, 500 million tons of iron ore, 21/4 million tons of lead, 31/2 million tons of zinc, 5 million tons of copper, 14 million tons of bauxite, 17 million tons of sulphur, 68 million tons of salt, and 3 million tons of potash. It was an unparalleled performance. But what of today? Why the present low production and high costs? Among the black clouds in the mining sky none are so black as that presented by the labor situation. We know it is the result of the legislation and the interpretation of that legislation in the past ten or fifteen years. Since the passage of the Norris-LaGuardia Act in 1932, we have had nothing but a succession of laws, regulations, and decisions that have intensified the strength of the unions and made the operators of the mines and the sources of their financing prartirally impotent

Jan 1, 1946

By NEWTON B. KNOX

THE Guianas region is a geological unit, consisting of the northern lobe of the Brazilian Shield, but political accident and the fact that rivers act as the principal means of transportation have divided the region between five separate sovereignties. Brazilian and Venezuelan Guiana have already been considered. The French, Dutch, and British colonies consist of a coastal plain some fifty miles wide, which, together with the lower reaches of the principal rivers, support the greater part of the population. Inland from this tidewater region is a wide area of low, forest-covered hills, under-lain by gneisses, schists, granites, and pegmatites of the Shield. As in Venezuelan Guiana, these rocks are overlain by a thick series of horizontal continental sediments intruded by moderately basic magmas. Gold, bauxite and diamonds have been the principal products of the colonies. The first metal is quite widespread in the hill country. The quartz mines are small, though occasionally rich; probably the greater number of veins remain undiscovered because of the thick mantle of decomposition product that covers the schists and gneisses. The greater proportion of the gold, therefore, is derived from placers which are exploited in all three colonies. Some geologists claim that they occur in two belts parallel to the coast; whether this feature has its origin in the location of the primary mineralization or in the gradients of the rivers is not clear. In some instances the river gravels grade into auriferous laterite. The laterites are well developed in the Guianas and represent the weathering products of the more basic rocks.

Jan 1, 1946

By Sidney H. Haughton

FOLLOWING the discovery of diamonds in 1870 and the Witwatersrand gold fields in 1886 South Africa changed from a predominantly pastoral country with a scattered white population into a land whose economy came rapidly to be based primarily on mining. The total value of the mineral output of the Union in 1944 was approximately $493,000,000, to which gold contributed 84 per cent. Gold furnished some 33 per cent of the Union Government's total revenue in that year, and approximately half the country's population obtained its livelihood directly or indirectly from the gold mining industry. In any review of the Union's mining activities and in any consideration of the country's future, gold mining must occupy a prominent place. It is generally conceded that the present structure is not properly balanced and that an economy based on a preponderance of a single nonpermanent factor possesses potentialities of serious instability.

Jan 1, 1946

By L. A. Cowan

IF the elements of personality be those characteristics in which humans differ, and if this definition be applied to the purchasing department for the Climax operations in Colorado, it must he concluded that this department has no distinguishing traits that would give it a departmental personality different from that possessed by the similar department of any progressive mining enterprise. Or, one may go further by stating that the rudimentary functions of any purchasing practice employed principally in the acquisition of maintenance, repair, and operating supplies are much alike, whether or not the industry involved be mining or milling. However, in the fact that the principal purchases of a mining company are materials for maintenance and repair and consumable operating supplies lies that essential characteristic which differentiates mining and milling purchasing functions from those of the manufacturer, the fabricator, or the ordinary processor.

Jan 1, 1946

By A. C. Fieldner

This is the tenth annual report of research and technologic work conducted by the Bureau of Mines on the occurrence, properties, mining, preparation, and uses of coal and coal products. These annual reviews are guide's to the current work-and publications of the Bureau but do not replace the more complete reports published under the authorship of the individual investigators on specific problems in Bureau of Mines bulletins, technical papers, reports of investigations, and information circulars and in the technical press. The Annual Report of the Director of the Bureau of Mines to the Secretary of the Interior for the Fiscal Year ended June 30, 1945, summarizes the year's work on coal as follows: Coal and Coal Products The United States maintained its No. 1 industrial position in supplying fuel for war and in preparing for peace through more complete mining, improved preparation and up-grading of coal for special uses, and better utilization of coal in industrial establishments and homes.

Jan 1, 1946

By B. A. Stainton, John D. Gill

OUR combined economic activities have as their goal the maximum of individual well-being and national security. In this age of intense international competition the two objectives are closely related. For many decades, the maximum of well-being and ability to maintain national security have moved generally upward. The best single measure-perhaps the only adequate measure -of the level of the rising goal is the per capita real national income (national income corrected for price changes). For centuries before the industrial revolution the income of the world's population changed little from generation to generation. In our country prior to 1800 the growth of national income was hardly measurable from decade to decade. Since 1850, perhaps since the "industrial revolution," the growth of per capita real income has been increasing geometrically. Of major importance is the accelerative growth of the productive ability of our economy. Inadequate consideration of its implications is partly responsible for periodic delays in solving our princi-

Jan 1, 1946

By GORDON H. FISHER

During the year 1945, the drilling pace in West Texas increased above that in the year 1944, and represented the highest number of well completions since 2941. The 1680 new wells drilled 8,287,958 ft. of hole for a per well average of 4933 ft. This depth is approximately 30o. ft. deeper than the average for the year 1944. Although the deepest well drilled in West Texas (Phillips Petroleum Company's Ada Price No. 1, in Pecos County) was completed during the year. 1944 to a depth of 15,279 ft. and tested the Ellen-burger horizon, the producing depth record for West Texas was set during the year 1945 with the completion of Amerada Petroleum Corporation's Jones No. I-A, in the Jones Ranch field, Gaines County, which now is producing at 11,422 ft. from the Devonian formation.

Jan 1, 1946

By C. W. Owings

"PURPOSE OF REPORTMany bituminous coal-mine officials realize that coal dust presents an ever-present coal-mine explosion hazard, and that persons forced to breathe large quantities of it may be more subject to respiratory infection than persons working in less dusty atmospheres. As an outgrowth of the realization that coal dust should be allayed at its source, many mining companies have expressed the desire to install dust-allaying equipment, and in a number of mines, water or wetting solution is being applied on the cutter bars of mining machines, on mobile loaders, belts or conveyors underground, and tops of mine cars. Spraying equipment also has been installed on dumps to allay dust during dumping operations. Dust-allaying equipment has not been standardized, however, because manufacturers have found that many prospective purchasers of such equipment have different ideas. These manufacturers wish to standardize, so far as feasible, the types and placement of such equipment. Many mine officials, although interested, do not know the best or most effective methods for allaying dust.For a number of years the Bureau of Mines has advocated allaying dust by applying water or, more recently, water modified by a wetting agent on the cutter bar of mining machines and by applying water to loaded and empty mine cars in order to keep as much dust as possible from spilling onto the haulage roads. In recent years this Bureau has also advocated applying water with or without a wetting agent during mechanical loading of coal and during unloading of coal from trackless cars or buggies and from elevating conveyors. It has now become apparent that specific arrangement of pipes, hose, and nozzles should be standardized to at least some extent. It is the purpose of this report, therefore, to give in detail suggested arrangement of dust-allaying equipment in the hope that both manufacturers and mine officials will have available dust-allaying equipment with maximum efficiency to do the desired work."

Nov 1, 1945

By E. C. Hoeman, W. C. Stoecker, R. C. Redfield

"INTRODUCTION Industrial sands, characterized by specific physical and chemical proportion, are,essential new materials for the manufacture of glass, sodium siliante and other products. Sands of suitable characteristics are used extensively for molds and cores in the casting of metals as a granular medium in municipal water filters, as abrasives, as traction sand to prevent the slipping of driving wheels of self-propelled vehicles on trucks and in various ceramic and other structural forms. In addition to the use of common silicon sands in concrete, cement, and mortar, special sands find use in sand-lime brick oxychloride cement, and flooring, for coating prepared roofing, and for placing ware in saggers although sand for sandpaper has been mostly displaced by other harder mineral or synthetic grains, other abrasive uses are numerous and include sandblasting stone sawing, glass burnishing and finishing."

Oct 1, 1945

By W. M. Bangert, F. S. Boericke

"INTRODUCTION Previous investigations of the Boulder City station of the Bureau of Mines have demonstrated that low-grade domestic chromite concentrates can be roasted with carbon to obtain selective reduction of the contained iron, and that the reduced iron can be removed by acid leaching of the roasted products to produce residues with higher chromium iron ratios. Thus, some chromite ores or concentrates that originally contain too much iron to be acceptable for the production of ferrochrome can, by this treatment, be rendered marketable as ""high-grade"" chromite. 3/The present report supplements the earlier work of the Bureau and re¬cords the results of small-scale laboratory tests investigating the effects of:1. Temperature and time of the reducing roast.2. Chromite and carbon particle size.3. Ratio of carbon to chromite in the initial roast mixture.4. Variations in the alumina and silica content of the ore.5. Back-oxidation of the roast product.6. Temperature and time of leaching .of roast product.This work differs from that done previously in that particular emphasis was placed on roast mixtures containing just enough carbon for the reduction of the iron in the chromite, whereas some two and one-half times this amount of carbon was used in the earlier work.In addition to these tests, the mechanism of the production reactions was examined for the purpose of explaining the precance of acid-soluble chromium, which occurs under certain conditions of chromite reduction."

Jul 1, 1945

"INTRODUCTION Industrial utilization of the present submarginal domestic manganese resources of the United States is wholely dependent at this time on the electrolytic manganese process established as the result of 4 years of continuous operation of the Bureau of Mines pilot plant at Boulder City and 7 years' operations of the Electro Manganese Corporation commercial plant at Knoxville, Tenn.Three Kids ore provided the feed for the Boulder City pilot plant during 3 years of operation. Hence, the electrowinning characteristics of the ore have been thoroughly established, making possible accurate estimates for commercial operations.Before the Defense Plant Corporation constructed the leaching plant, the Bureau of Mines conducted an exploration project to determine the extent and grade of the ore reserves. Additional exploration, development, and mining by the Manganese Ore Cc, have accurately determined the tonnage and grade of ore. A large tonnage of stock piled ore is now available for immediate processing, and a considerable tonnage of openpit ore has been stripped of overburden preparatory to mining. Numerous facilities, such as power, water, and housing, needed for an electrolytic manganese plant are already available.All of these factors, as well as plans for installation of scale electrolytic manganese plant facilities, are presented in detail in the chapter entitled, ""Mining and. Electrolytic Reduction of use from Three Kids Manganese Mine."" The Manganese Ore Co. kindly provided information on the present ore reserves and state of development of the mine."

Jun 1, 1945

By J. Bruce Clemmer, M. F. Williams, B. H. Clemmons, Carl Rampacek, R. H. Stacy

"INTRODUCTION This report is the first of several dealing with the application of flotation methods for beneficiating the calcareous and siliceous red iron ores and ferruginous sandstones of the Birmingham district. The flotation study was part of a general investigation of the concentratability of various iron ores of Alabama and other Southeastern States undertaken by the Southern Experiment Station of the Bureau of Mines, United States Department of the Interior, in cooperation with the University of Alabama, Tuscaloosa, Ala.Batch testing and pilot-plant flotation testing of the calcareous red ores of the Birmingham district have been in progress for several years, and although some phases of the study are not yet completed, enough data are available to indicate that many of the ores will yield marketable-grade concentrates with good recovery.The first flotation tests on the calcareous red ores employing conventional methods either the iron oxides or the siliceous gangue materials failed to give the desired results. The inferior separations obtained or prohibitive reagent requirements made the methods unattractive. Other more effective flotation methods were sought. A laboratory study of various reagents was undertaken. It resulted in the development of two attractive methods embracing anionic flotation of the activated siliceous gangue from the retarded iron oxides. The methods were similar in that fatty acid or soap-collecting agents were employed in strongly alkaline pulps to float the naturally activated quartz from the iron-ore pulps. The methods differed, however, in the addition agent employed to retard the hematite or hematite and calcite. By proper choice and quantity of the addition agent, the calcite could be floated with the quartz or retarded with the hematite as desired. Ability to recover or reject the calcite gives added flexibility to the separation. Although the methods have their limitations and cannot be considered ""cure-alls,"" they have given encouraging results on a number of calcareous red ores that heretofore proved difficult to concentrate by conventional flotation procedures."

Mar 1, 1945

By C. E. Julihn, Lowell B. Moon

"INTRODUCTION To increase the supply of ore needed to produce steel the Bureau of Mines has explored 187 mineral deposits containing chromium, iron, manganese, cobalt, nickel, fluorspar, tungsten, vanadium, or coal during the fiscal years. 1940-44, the deposits thus explored were selected from several thousand that were first examined to appraise their possibilities. The objective of the exploration was to determine the tonnage and grade of ores upon which mining, operations might be based, and the metallurgical processing that was most suitable for their utilization.Most of these deposits were sub-marginal by pre-war standards; hence there had been no incentive for their exploration, yet many such deposits were known to exist that probably contained ore sufficient in grade and amount to be utilized as war reserves.Some of the Bureau's exploration projects have disclosed substantial or even very large amounts of ore, much of which is fairly high in grade. In a few of them bodies of high-grade ore have been found, though in others the tonnage has proved to be too small or too low-grade for utilization."

Mar 1, 1945

By J. R. Long, A. H. Roberson, T. R. Graham, R. S. Dean

EXPERIMENTAL work on the properties of high-purity alloys of the copper-manganese-zinc system has necessarily required extensive metallographic work to determine the equilibrium conditions in this system. Previous work on these alloys is fragmentary and, unfortunately, based on alloys made with impure grades of manganese, thus introducing significant amounts of iron, silicon, aluminum and carbon. Since these elements are known to affect equilibrium conditions, it became desirable to re-examine these alloys made from the pure metals. The alpha solid solution field was of particular interest and, therefore, was chosen for the initial work, which was outlined to determine the composition limits of this field. PREVIOUS WORK Heusler1 conducted an extensive survey of the liquid-solid regions of this system and also made an estimate of the solid-phase boundaries at 340°C. The pertinent part of his diagram is given in Fig. I, but it is of limited usefulness, since it applied to a single temperature only and is based on impure alloys under admittedly nonequilibrium conditions. Bauer and Hansen,2 likewise working with impure alloys, have determined the phase boundaries for alphabeta brasses containing small amounts of manganese and indicate an increase in the extent of the alpha field with increasing manganese. This is not in accordance with Heusler or with data obtained on pure alloys.3 They also described a third constituent precipitating in the alpha plus beta field below 350° to 400°C. but did not identify this constituent. Guillet4 and Heike and Ledibur5 have also noted this precipitate Each of these investigators recognized that impurities present in the manganese could and did have an effect on the structure and properties of their alloys. Corson6 in particular pointed out the hardening effects of silicon, aluminum, and carbon in copper-manganese alloys and Heusler reported that his alloys containing more than 25 per cent manganese were extremely brittle. In all probability this brittleness was due to the impurities present. This early work, therefore, should be taken as a general guide for preliminary studies only, and high-purity alloys may be expected to produce different results. The work of the Bureau of Mines laboratories with electrolytic manganese has been briefly summarized by Dean7 but includes only a short section on this system. Later work3 outlined a limited portion of the alpha field in the neighborhood of 65 per cent copper, 10 per cent manganese, and 25 per cent zinc. The present work was under-

Jan 1, 1945

By R. R. Sayers

The increasing use of hydrogen fluoride (annual consumption now exceeds 500,000 pounds (1)4/) directly and its occurrence as a byproduct of the utilization of fluorine compounds in the mineral industries, especially in metallurgical processes and in the refining of petroleum products, has aroused interest in its toxicity, and a brief review of the literature, with special reference to the hazard of poisoning in the mineral industries, seems to be opportune. Recently, residents in the vicinity of aluminum plants have been complaining of injury to livestock and vegetation as well as to their own health from the gases discharged into the air during operation of the plants, hydrofluoric acid gas apparently being the offender. The comparatively recent utilization of hydrofluoric acid in the alkylation process for the production of high-octane gasoline has raised the question of the hazard of poisoning in the petroleum Industry. In addition, the use of fluorine-containing refrigerants has extended the potential al exposure outside of industry (2).

Jan 1, 1945

By H. Foster Bain

The war has brought about many changes in the Western States, and some have deep pr sent or potent al economic significance. The West has been feeling severe growing pains for a number of years. Especially since the beginning of preparation for national defense and through the period of

Jan 1, 1945

By Jerome F. Kuzmick

Condusions. From the work on aluminum powder, the following general con clusions can bc drawn: I. The physical properties of aluminum compacts, such as density. strength and ductility, increase with increasing pressure, up to the practicable pressure limits. 2. Good properties ill aluminum con pacts can be secured only by the use of high pressures, because it is neccssary to rupture the refractory oxide film on aluminum powder. 3. Considerable softening of the specimens occurs upon sintering. regardlers of the pressure used. General Conclusions 1. For relatively short-time sintering. molding pressure is a very important factor in the final physical properties of the sintered specimens. 2. The effect of pressure. is difierent for each metal, so that few general rules can be drawn that would apply to all metals. 3. In many cases, fur a particular metal powder and sintering temperature there is a critical pressure at which the best physical properties can be obtained. 4. The principles of cold work and in nealing and their effect on grain structure applied to massive metal also holds true for sintered metals. 5. Particle size, at least for electrolytic iron powder, does not have a. great effect on ultimate grain six. DISCUSSION [E. E, Schumacher presiding V.. V. Crane. *—I was particularly impressed with Dr. Kuzmick's work on tin IF not the illustration, particularly the Second one. a very good illustraition of hot preessing. in that

Jan 1, 1945

By Thompson D. R, Milton R, Perry K. M A

From the Department for Research in Industrial Medicine (Medical Research Council), The London Hospital; and the De Havilland Aircraft Company:M.R.C. INVESTIGATIONS IN 1936In 1936 the Industrial Pulmonary Disease Committee of the Medical Research Council investigated both clinically and radiologically a group of fifty workers who had been exposed for a number of years to the inhalation of alumina in the reduction factory of the British Aluminium Company. The results are shown in Table 1.They also considered the sickness records of all the workers (Hill, 1936), as compared with those in other parts of the factory (Table 2).

Jan 1, 1945

By Lowell B. Moon

Regardless of how a mineral deposit in first discovered or by whom, any mining enterprise based upon it must pass through a preliminary stage of exploration. The common understanding of ?exploration? among mining engineers is well-expressed by Jackson and Knaebel:3/ Exploration work ranges from that performed by the individual prospector employing only the simplest tool, and equipment to elaborate campaigns involving the expenditure of largo stuns of money end the use of churn- car diamond-drilling equipment, large test-pitting crews, or sometimes a regular mining organization. In any event, the object is to determine as accurately as possible, with the funds available, the size, shape, and other characteristics of the ore bodies and their average value or grade.

Jan 1, 1945