technical school at eighteen, graduates at twenty-two and serves a practical apprenticeship as workman or subordinate for three years; this supposition will agree fairly well with the usual practice.

At the age of twenty-five, the average remaining life of a man is estimated at thirty-eight years. If, now, we assume an average working life of thirty years, it must be plain that to keep up the supply of 6,000 engineers, there will be required 200 new men each year.

It is evident, therefore, that the supply of graduates turned out by the mining schools in 1892, namely, forty-eight, is not so extremely out of proportion to the demand as at first sight appeared.

We must remember that most of the mining schools partly train for two to three times the number who graduate, and that the graduates from foreign mining schools also compete for places. These considerations are partly offset by the fact that all who graduate do not need or choose to follow their profession, and that some practice it abroad.

Making these offsetting allowances, it would appear that there are about four times as many openings as there are mining graduates to fill them. This is a condition of things which agrees very well with experience, and shows why there is such a steady demand for the graduates of the best mining schools.

They are reasonably sure of good and remunerative positions if, in addition to the proper training and experience, they have the peculiar natural faculties essential for success in any branch of engineering.

It must be evident to any candid mind that adverse criticise of American mining schools, founded on the small number of their graduates, is without sub stantial foundation.

ARE MINING SCHOOLS JUSTIFIED?

This question can hardly fail to suggest itself. If the mining population be so insignificant in numbers; if there be only a couple of hundred mining engineers required a year, why should we maintain expensive. mining schools?

The answer, on a mere commercial basis, is not far to reach. The miners may be insignificant in numbers, but in respect of the value produced as a result of their labor, they are the most important element in the entire population.

Thus, in 1880 the actual money value produced as the result of labor, per capita, was as follows:

Agricultural...

$289.00

Manufactures (gross value, less one-third for raw materials),
Mining industries (all engaged)..

996.00

1167.00

1577.00

Miners only....

The statistics for the year 1889 for agriculture and manufactures are not yet at hand, but those for mining

are:

Actual value produced by all engaged in the industry per capita, $ 981 Per miner only engaged..

2,900

Per administrative officer...

23,920

Per estimated engineer..

98,872

If it be true that "money talks," this showing

should be a sufficient answer.

If each captain of the mining industry actually superintends and controls an average production of nearly $100,000 a year, is it not important to the nation that they should be thoroughly trained to their business? The community has a right to demand that into their training shall go all that modern science can give to make them efficient.

Surely it is not a bad investment to spend a thousand dollars a year in educating a man for four or five years who shall have the direct control of the production of $100,000 a year for thirty years! The sum total is an average of $3,000,000 as the result of the work directed by each mining engineer in the United States during his working life.

When we come to consider, not the gross output, but the net profit, these conclusions are even more strongly enforced. And when we consider the peculiar nature of mineral wealth, the value of such a policy to the nation is even more apparent.

The farmer can harvest his crop year after year; most of his increase comes from sun and air and rain; he has only to fertilize the soil now and then, and his farm remains a source of wealth from generation to generation.

But there are no fertilizers for worked-out mines. The crops the miner reaps can be harvested but once, and what he leaves behind through lack of skill is forever lost.

It is now plain why a large mining company is often justified in paying an experienced mining engineer from six to twenty-five thousand dollars a

year. Such a man is often able to earn for his employers many times his salary. And it is also evident that the field for mining engineers, though limited, holds rich rewards for those who have the training, the experience, and the energy for such responsibilities. It is a field where inefficiency and weakness of body, mind, or character are signal disqualifications.

ATTENDANCE AT AMERICAN AND EUROPEAN MINING

SCHOOLS.

A complete comparison of this sort is difficult to make, because it is not easy to obtain the data for all of these schools at the same period, unless we select a date somewhat remote; and because in Europe it is the custom to distinguish between schools for engineers (Bergakadamien) and for miners (Bergschulen). The following are condensed partly from Professor R. H. Richards' admirable paper on "American Mining Schools," Trans., vol. xv., pp. 814, 816, etc., and partly from other sources mentioned below.

The first striking fact which this table shows is the small number of students of mining engineering in the famous Royal School of Mines at London. In the period from 1851 to 1890 this school has graduated in mining, metallurgy, or geology, 303 associates; of these, twenty-seven were in geology only, which leaves for mining and metallurgy 276, or an average of seven per year.

The other English schools might swell the list somewhat, but it is evident that the number of mining

students in England is small in comparison with the English mining interests.

On the continent, where mines and mining are largely under government control, we should expect to find a very different state of affairs; but even in Germany, the birthplace of scientfic mining, her four great mining schools contain only 406 students, while Austria has 117, France less than 200, and Sweden, with her famous iron industries, only seventeen.

*This estimate for students in the Royal School of Mines proper, for 1887, is made by an associate of this school. There were several other schools in England giving some instruction in mining, but this seems to have been at' this time the only one with a regular course for mining students.

† Preussische Zeitschrift fur Berg-Hutten-und Salinenwesen, Bd. 38, S. 378 B.

‡ Oesterreichishe Zeitschrift fur Berg-und Huttenwesen, 1889, Bd. 37, S.