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By AIME AIME

ONE hundred and eighty-three A.I.M.E. members, W. S. Morris with an excellent technical program, John Suman, "oil" President of the Institute, and a Texas norther blew into Dallas for the fall meeting of the Petroleum Division at the Adolphus Hotel, Oct. 16-18. and the most successful result will give future meeting committees a high mark to equal. People were still talking of the terrific heat the week before and it was quite noticeable that with the lowered temperatures, the members were in fine fettle for the technical sessions. The total attendance on Friday noon was

Jan 1, 1941

The Institute maintains a dual reltionship with students: (1) an individual relationship with a Student Associate; and (2) a relationship with local organizations of students, known as Affiliated Student Societies or Student Chapters. 1. The conditions of Student Associateship are set forth in Section 9, Article I, of the Bylaws of the Institute (see page 60 and following pages). During 1934, sundry amendments were made for the purpose of improving the student relationship. Post-graduate students are now eligible; and associateship can be maintained, with the payment of the regular dues of $2 per year, for 18 months following graduation in. June. With his regular dues, each Student Associate is entitled to receive during the year his choice of MINING AND METALLURGY, METALS TECHNOLOGY, MINING TECHNOLOGY, PETROLEUM TECHNOLOGY, or two "classes" of Technical Publications; and on payment of an additional fifty cents. he can have both MINING AND METALLURGY and any one of the others. He is accorded the privilege of getting special publications such as "The Porphyry Coppers" and "Elements of the Petroleum Industry" at the reduced prices applicable to Members; he has the privileges of the Engineering Societies Personnel Service and the Engineering Societies Library; and he is not only invited but urged to attend all meetings of the Institute, its Divisions and its Local Sections. The Institute wants, to extend the hand of professional fellowship to students following mineral industries curricula.

Jan 1, 1941

Sec. 1. The membership of the Institute shall comprise six classes, namely: 1. Members; 2. Honorary Members; 3. Senior Members; 4. Associates; 5. Junior Members; 6. Rocky Mountain Members. All shall be equally entitled to the privileges of membership, excepting that no member of any class whom residence shall be outside of the United States of America, except those residing in Mexico and Canada, shall be entitled to vote. SEC. 2. Members: A person to be eligible for election or transfer into the claw of Member must be at least 27 years of age and must have had at least six years' employment in the practice of engineering, mining, geology, metallurgy, or chemistry, during at least three years of which he must have held positions of responsibility in one or more of these fields. This shall not apply to Rocky Mountain members.

Jan 1, 1941

Jan 1, 1941

By AIME AIME

CONCIDENT with what promises to be a record-breaking year of activity in the world's greatest iron-ore district is the announcement of plans to hold the regional meeting of the American Institute of Mining & Metallurgical Engineers at Duluth, Aug. 12 to 15 in¬clusive. More than 25 open-pit mines will be in operation in Minnesota's great iron-ore district this year, affording to those attending the convention an unusual op¬portunity of viewing practically side by side the interesting activities of power-shovel operations, railway haulage, truck haulage, conveyor-belt haulage, tower-excavator operations, iron-ore concentration, and underground mining. The ore can be followed from the mines to washing and concentrating plants and to the docks and lake carriers on Lake Superior, where an average of one boat of 10,000 tons' capacity will be loaded and depart every 15 minutes, day and night, during the 1941 shipping season.

Jan 1, 1941

By George C. Bateman

I HAVE been introduced in the dual capacity of president of the Canadian Institute and Metals Controller for Canada. There are three particular points of similarity between these two positions. They are both temporary ; they both have to do with the mining industry ; and by a peculiar coincidence they both pay me exactly the same salary. It is difficult to appreciate the background of our present situation without knowing the really tremendous changes that have taken place since the last war. I sometimes think that even among ourselves we are likely to forget the extent to which our great mining industry has been expanded. In 1914 Canada's gold production amounted to only $16,000,000 and the suggestion was seriously ad¬vanced in Ottawa that the gold mines should be allowed to close down so that their men might be used in more important work. Today with a production at the rate of over $200,000,000 a year no one in Canada would venture such a suggestion because the output of our gold mines is the greatest single factor in producing dollar exchange, badly needed for the purchase of munitions and to maintain Canada's unbroken record of always meeting its obligations. Even with the severe restrictions now in effect against the importation of nonessentials, our imports for war purposes from the United States are resulting in the biggest adverse trade balance in our history. With us, gold mining ranks as an essential industry.

Jan 1, 1941

By AIME AIME

MIING Engineer. Metallurgist, Economist-in any of those three capacities Paul Tyler should be able to make a living. Further- more, he has proved his ability as an operating man teacher, researcher. and prolific writer. For the last three years he has been chief engineer of the non-metal Economics Division of the. U. S. Bureau of Mines.

Jan 1, 1941

By A. Lee Barrett

AN accelerated trend toward mechanical mining was noted in 1940, calling for improvements in and better performance of transportation, hoisting, and ventilating equipment. One of the most interesting experi¬ments in transportation is the track shuttle-car operation first put into use by the Princeton Mining Co. in Indiana and later at the Montour 4 mine of the Pittsburgh Coal Co. This system is based on the use of 10-ton drop-bottom mine cars operating on track and han¬dled by an ordinary gathering loco¬motive. These mine cars are loaded and taken in trips of two to a central dumping station which serves four or less loading machines. The dumping station consists of two standard chain-and-flight room conveyors, approximately 50 ft. long placed side by side approximately 4 ft. below the track from which the drop-bottom cars are dumped. These conveyors are operated at low speed and discharge into two similar elevating conveyors which operate at a higher speed and convey the coal to a trip of standard mine cars. A dumping station is usually located so that approximately 500,000 tons of coal may be handled through it before a move is required. This plan appears to have considerable possibilities for the mine equipped with small mine cars and standard locomotives since the advantages of large mine cars can be secured at a fraction of the cost required to install such cars throughout the mine. It appears logical that the future will see a much wider use of this modification in transportation.

Jan 1, 1941

By JOHN R. SUMAN

IT SEEMS particularly appropriate that the Institute's Regional Meeting should be held in Minnesota this year. Whether we like it or not, we cannot help looking at things now in the light of the World War and the all-out effort we, as a nation, are making to defend our resources, our institutions, and our way of life. The ability to do this lies in large measure in the ability to forge weapons of defense-the machines of war. The basic ingredients of any defense system, or war machine, are the raw materials of industry-iron ore, providing steel for guns, shells, tanks, and warships; coal for stoking the nation's furnaces; oil to furnish power for war planes, ships, trucks, and mechanized weapons; and all the other materials that play a vital role in the operation of modern armies and navies. The tremendous requirements of full-scale defense programs are indicated by the large number of commodities that are now under priorities because the supply is not sufficient to meet both defense needs and all normal civilian consumption. But out of all these items two are of paramount importance-steel and petroleum. In this age no nation can hope to main¬tain a position as a first-class power in the world without a highly developed industry, particularly the heavy industries based on steel, and without access to the necessary resources for those industries. In 1918, 70 per cent of the iron and steel production of the United States was required for defense purposes. In 1940, 15 per cent of our iron and steel production was consumed for defense purposes, and with the acceleration of the defense program, it appears that the proportion of steel output required for defense purposes will reach 40

Jan 1, 1941

By T. B. Counselman

WHEN one thinks of Minnesota iron ore, one thinks of big open pits, where high- grade ore is simply scooped up with a power shovel, loaded into cars, and hauled away for shipment to the blast furnace. On the western end of the Mesabi range, however, are large tonnages of iron ore which contain too much silica to be used directly in the blast furnace, and these ores must first be concentrated to a purer form. The Mesabi range is about 100 miles long and a maximum of 3 miles wide. The iron formation, which in its unaltered form is called taconite: consists of a banded iron- bearing chert. Where the high-grade ore bodies occur, these have resulted from folding and cracking with sub- sequent leaching out of the silica, leaving the iron oxide behind. The big open pits and the underground mines are situated in these concentrations.

Jan 1, 1941

By A. W. Gauger

SMELTING of iron ore, manufacture of steel, and the fabrication of ferrous metal products are all processes that require energy. Charcoal was adequate, to supply this energy for the relatively simple processes of the early iron-masters. In the fourth decade of the nineteenth century, anthracite and bituminous coal and later coke supplanted charcoal for the smelting of iron. So far as the chemical phases of the process were concerned, charcoal was an ideal iron-furnace fuel. It had practically no sulphur, and its ash, besides being low in quantity, consisted chiefly of lime and alkalies, thus supplying a part of the flux required for smelting the ore. The ash of coal and coke on the other hand, being largely silica, had itself to be fluxed with bases added to the charge. Physically, however, coke proved to have many advantages over charcoal, which could not be used in the furnaces of today. The chief reason, however, for the change from charcoal to coke was the impossibility of maintaining an adequate wood supply.

Jan 1, 1941

Jan 1, 1941

Jan 1, 1941

Jan 1, 1941

Jan 1, 1941

By Alexander Knoll, Dwight L. Baker

THIS paper is a report on work undertaken to investigate the results and conclusions of Ravitz and Porter1,2 that galena freed of surface oxidation products and lead carbonate ("clean" galena) is waterrepellent, and that the action of xanthates in flotation is the action of a cleansing agent, enabling oxidized galena particles to expose a pure lead sulphide, water-repellent surface. The apparatus, in construction and use, was essentially that of Ravitz and Porter. The only significant modification introduced by the present authors was the substitution of a three-necked flask for the flotation cell as the "reaction vessel." Our procedure was to place 50 grams of freshly ground, minus 200-mesh galena in the reaction vessel, sweep out all molecular oxygen from the system with oxygen-free nitrogen, and proceed to wash the galena surface free of its oxidation products with repeated small portions of (I) ammonium acetate (500 c.c. of water, 200 grams of ammonium acetate) or (2) ammonium chloride, hydrochloric acid (2 liters containing 200 grams of ammonium chloride and 25 c.c. Of 1.18 sp. gr hydrochloric acid). The galena was next washed with many 100-c.c. portions of oxygen-free, distilled water. The galena was finally considered free of soluble salts when wash water that had been in contact with the mineral for at least 48 hr.* gave negative tests for: (x) lead ion with sulphide; (2) chloride with silver ion; (3) acetate with cuprous chloride, sodium chloride; and (4) ammonium ion with Nessler's reagent. Next 500 c.c. of potassium ethyl xanthate solution, free of dissolved oxygen, was run onto the "clean" galena particles. For this system there were determined: I. The wetting properties of the clean galena particles by shaking the reaction flask and noting the degree of mineral collection at the liquid-air interface. This was, of course, simply a qualitative test, but it proved adequate for our purpose. 2. The removal of xanthate ion from the potassium xanthate solution on being shaken with the "cleansed" mineral. Xanthate concentrations were determined by iodine titration according to the methods of Taylor and Knoll.3 3. The pH of the xanthate solution after having been shaken with the "cleansed" galena. The pH was determined colorimetrically.4 The results of five experiments of the type mentioned above are given in Table x.

Jan 1, 1941

Jan 1, 1941

By Thomas T., Read

ALTHOUGH the first colonists in the area that is now the A United States, whether Spanish, French or English in nationality, were usually keenly interested in the possibilities of mineral wealth, it is a curious and interesting fact that none of them happened upon the mineral deposits that eventually were to make this the greatest mineral-producing country; up to 1800 it would probably have been rated as rather poor in minerals. Spanish explorers traversed the southeastern United States with- , out finding the Appalachian gold deposits that aroused so much interest in the early nineteenth century; Coronado sought in vain for the seven golden cities of Cibola; and the important gold \ deposits of California were not discovered until the political sovereignty of the region had passed from Mexico, which had held it for three centuries. The French also held Canada for nearly two centuries (and the British for another century) without finding the mineral deposits in Ontario and Quebec that now are so important. Though they knew of the copper of the Keweenaw peninsula, the lead ores. of Wisconsin and Missouri, and the coal of Illinois in the seventeenth century, these deposits were all too remote for exploitation. In the area held by Great Britain, iron smelting was planned at Jamestown as early as 1619 and was actually begun at Lynn, Mass., in 1643. The industry grew slowly, at first, but had reached considerable importance before the Revolution. Commercial bituminous coal mining began about 1750 in Virginia but anthracite mining in Pennsylvania was not started until 1800. As a result there was naturally little interest in the technical aspects of mineral prodnction here before 1800 by any except the few people who were actually engaged in it. Students of natural science were much interested in minerals, however. The activities of those who rank as geologists are so thoroughly covered in

Jan 1, 1941

Jan 1, 1941

WE the undersigned, being all persons of full age and citizens of the United States, and a majority residents of the State of New York, desiring to form a corporation pursuant to the provisions of the Membership Corporations Law for the purpose of incorporating, as provided in Section 6 of Article I. of said law, the existing unincorporated association known as American Institute of Mining Engineers, do hereby make, acknowledge and 6le this Certificate for that purpose, and do Certify as follows: I. That the American Institute of Mining Engineers is an unincorporated association organized and existing with the object of promoting the arts and sciences connected with the economic production of the useful minerals and metals and the welfare of those employed in these industries by means of meetings for social intercourse and the reading and discussion of professional papers, and to circulate by means of publications among its members and associates the information thus obtained. 11. That the persons duly appointed or designated to manage the affairs of said association are designated by the rules thereof Members of its Council; that the under- signed are all members of said Council as the same was constituted on the 29th day of December, 1904.

Jan 1, 1941