660 MINING ENGINEERING 



before it can be perfected. It depends for success, not only on the 

 good will of the miner and the mine-owner, but also upon the dis- 

 cretion and tact of the student. I have always found the miner, and 

 nearly always the mine-owner, willing to help any young man of 

 good physique and good nature who was not overcome with a sense 

 of his own great knowledge and importance. But when a very 

 young man sets out, unasked, to show another man, old enough to 

 be his father, how to run a mine, there is naturally trouble, as 

 there ought to be. For the first lesson a young man has to learn 

 is the necessity of adapting himself to his surroundings, and of fitting 

 himself into his place in the greater mechanism; and until he learns 

 this, his lot is likely to prove rougher in the mining world than 

 anywhere else. 



There is much to justify the prejudice against a man who goes 

 to college simply to escape doing his share of the world's work. 

 Consequently, I have advised my students never to ask for work 

 because they were college students, but simply because they were 

 able and willing to earn what they were paid. In short, I have ad- 

 vised them to secure in their vacations the advantages of the " Wan- 

 der jahren" of the German apprentice. By scattering over a wide 

 territory they are absorbed very naturally, and, as a rule, without 

 much difficulty. Some of them have learned hard lessons not down 

 in books, but it has done them good. 



The men are all advised as to the principal precautions to be * 

 taken to preserve their health, the dangers they will have to meet, 

 and how to meet them. They are plainly told that unless they are 

 ready to take the hard chances of the miner's life they had better 

 choose some other occupation. 



Among more than a thousand students who have participated 

 in this work during the last fifteen years there have been but two 

 serious accidents. Both of these were fatal. The victims were young 

 men who had been working for nearly a year in the endeavor to 

 earn enough money to pay their way through college. One was 

 caught in a cave. The other, in firing a blast, had his candle blown 

 out by the spitting fuse, and, in the darkness, was unable to reach 

 a place of safety. But these very accidents have served to convince 

 the mining public that the California boys were enough in earnest 

 to face the dangers of the miner's life. 



This attempt at a solution of the problem is not presented as a 

 general one; it is probably better adapted to Western than to East- 

 ern mining conditions. It can only be applied when there exist 

 a large number of mining camps within easy reach of the mining 

 school. Its best feature is, that it falls in with the American idea 

 of free initiative. Moreover, it serves admirably to select the fit 

 and reject the unfit without loss of time. It also automatically 



