Omitting Belgium, for which I have no data, it is plain that the United States had more mining students than any country in Europe except Germany, and that she had more than one-third as many students in her mining schools as Austria, England, France, Germany, and Sweden together.

It must be evident that the attendance at mining schools, the world over, is extremely small compared with that of the schools of law, medicine, and theology. Thus the attendance at the Berlin Mining School (Bergakadamie) for 1887 was 104, while at the Berlin Institute of Technology (Technische Hochschule) it was over 1,100, and at the Berlin University over 5,000.

But it would be a great mistake to conclude from their small numbers that these schools were unimportant. In collecting materials for this paper, the writer happened on a list of the seventy-six Americans who studied at Freiberg between 1819 and 1865. The names of twenty-five of these have become familiar as household words to all members of the mining profession in America. They have become leaders in nearly every branch of mining and metallurgical enterprise. industries of coal and iron and steel, of copper and lead, and gold and silver, are all debtors to these old-time students of Freiberg.

The

The mining schools of Paris, Berlin, and London have educated many brilliant American engineers, and if the influence of these mining schools could be blotted out from American mining practice, it is safe to say that the record of which we are so proud to-day would never have been made.

DIFFICULTIES PECULIAR ΤΟ THE AMERICAN MINING

SCHOOLS.

In Germany and Austria the mines are largely under government control, and are worked, not so much for immediate results, as to get the greatest ultimate yield. In America they are exclusively under private control.

The American system has many distinct advantages, particularly in a new country. Routine and precedent are thrust aside, and energy and originality have full sweep. But it must be admitted that there are serious drawbacks to this system. Not infrequently mines are owned and controlled by persons without the slightest technical knowledge, and often by those interested more in the speculative than the productive value of the property; and in such cases a thoroughly trained mining engineer is not a desirable superintendent. Any man who will work the mine for the market will do better.

This policy, which often enriches the speculator in a fabulous manner, leads the public to think that a long course of training is unnecessary to the mining engineer, because the most successful operators in this kind of "mining" have been without it. The failures which overtake most men of this class are seldom noticed, as in a lottery one success hides a hundred failures.

As a single comparison: the Idria mine in Austria was discovered almost in the same year that Columbus discovered America. It has been in almost continuous

operation ever since. Every resource known to science has been tried, to ensure the greatest ultimate yield. For over four hundred years it has given employment to generation after generation of miners, and has yielded a small but steady income on the outlay.

Compare with this record the history of the Comstock lode. If the Idria mine had been in America it would have been "worked out" in twenty-five years, and have produced, perhaps, two or three millionaires. Which system is in the long run better for a country, is not hard to decide.

it

If a government is ever justified in controlling the business affairs of its people, surely the mineral wealth of a country, and the conditions under which it should be removed, are the ones which most need regulation and control. Nevertheless, in the present condition of our civil service, such a change would only add to the difficulties and dangers of our government, and may be dismissed as impracticable.

But the bearing of the above facts on the engineering schools is evident. On the continent of Europe the only road to success lies through the mining school; in America there are many "short cuts," and the man who takes them learns his mistake too late to profit by it himself, and is often too proud to admit it by warning others.

Again, the work of the mining engineer always involves more unknown and indeterminate quantities than in any other branch of engineering. Moreover, it is more remote from business and money-centers; it sel

dom receives the same intelligent and appreciative criticism that awaits the work of the civil and mechanical engineer. Their work is always in the eye of the public. His is hundreds of feet below daylight, and hundreds of miles from the public centers. In the best case, mine owners are forced to estimate the capacity of their engineer or superintendent, not from the difficulties he overcomes, but from the dividends he produces.

Nevertheless, as the more easily worked mines are exhausted, it is certain that the value of technical training will in the future of American mining practice become more and more recognized. No one can deny that American mining is carried on with an energy and force which is the admiration of the world. But perhaps none would more readily admit the need for better scientific and technical training, than those to whom we are most indebted for the advances we have made; for none are better aware of the enormous waste that results when ignorance and incompetence are at the head of affairs.

But mining schools labor under another difficulty that other engineering schools do not have to meet. The miners, their peculiar constituency, are scattered over the most remote and inaccessible quarters of the globe. Other schools may draw their best materials from the densely populated centers in which they are placed. But much of the best material for the mining schools is obtained from among the sons of the miners themselves. Now the situation is this: these young men, except in rare instances, are utterly unable to

acquire more than the merest elements of a general education. The requirements for entrance to an engineering scnool are in such cases as absolutely beyond their reach as if they were the inhabitants of another planet. Some attempts have been made to move the schools to the mining centers. More students may be at first secured from among the miners, but it is necessary for the schools to give them elementary instruction several years before they can properly be called engineering students. There would also need to be an engineering school for each mining center, which is impossible. This solution of the difficulty is therefore more apparent than real.

Most schools attempt a partial solution of the problem by admitting men from the mining regions as "special students" to such classes as they are fitted to enter. Most of them confine themseves to such studies as can be pursued without mathematics, so that few of them are fianlly able to graduate, but these few who take the whole course attain success of a high order. To reach and help this class of material is, in the writer's opinion, the real problem of the mining schools.

On the continent of Europe, where the mines are largely under government control, this lack of provision for the lower mining education does not exist. Thus, in Prussia in 1889 there were at the mines ten Bergschulen, with 408 students, and twenty-nine Berg-Vorschulen, with 482 students, for foreman and workmen respectively. A similiar practice holds in Austria and France. Under American conditions such a solution of the