COPPER DEPOSITS IN ARIZONA 



205 



the word "Consolidated." In fact how- 

 ever the Copper Queen proved to have 

 been worked out, and the Atlanta alone 

 supplied the ore for years which restored 

 the Consolidated Company to prosperity 

 and fame. 



The copper industry was passing 

 through the most trying period of its 

 existence. The price of standard copper 

 bars (of ninety-six per cent) had dropped 

 from eighteen cents to a trifle under eight 

 cents per pound, Lake copper standing as 

 low as ten cents. Dividends failed to be 

 paid during 1885, 1886 and 1887, the 

 only blanks in the dividend record of the 

 Company. To make cheaper copper, 

 better appliances had to be introduced. 

 A new smelter was erected and despite 

 low prices, a fraction of a cent per pound 

 was made — when M. Sacretan unin- 

 tentionally sacrificed himself and his 

 bank for the good of the copper world. 

 After that, as years rolled by, the Com- 

 pany accjuired adjacent property and 

 enlarged the capacity of its furnaces. 

 Meanwhile the character of the ores 

 changed in depth. The presence of 

 sulphur in the furnace charge resulted 

 in the production of matte, as well as 

 copper. This involved a radical altera- 

 tion in the metallurgical methods and 

 the design of the smelter. Bessemer 

 converters were added to the plant. 

 Although the conversion of all the copper 

 into matte involved a slight extra smelt- 

 ing cost, by making cleaner slags a saving 

 of more than one per cent in the furnace 

 returns was made. Moreover the bars 

 produced carried ninety-nine per cent 

 of copper and over, instead of ninety-six 

 per cent. 



As a result of the.greater purity of the 

 bars, the cost of refining by electrolysis 

 was reduced to a figure that made it 

 profitable to pay the refiner the slight 

 excess over the old furnace method and 



recover the precious metals. Since 1896 

 all the copper has been refined electro- 

 lytically, and has saved seventy or eighty 

 cents in gold and silver per ton of ore. 

 It is a trifle per ton, but amounts at 

 present to an aggregate of $865,000 

 per annum from the Company's ores 

 alone. 



The second works, erected in the 

 cramped valley around which the town 

 of Bisbee had grown up, could not be 

 expanded to meet the growth of the 

 Company's production, and therefore 

 toward the close of the century, it was 

 recognized that a new smelter in a new 

 locality must be built. 



As early as 1887 a railroad of thirty- 

 nine miles was built by the Company 

 to connect with the Santa Fe Railroad's 

 Sonora System at Fairbanks. Its tracks 

 were extended for twenty-eight miles 

 easterly to Douglas, a junction point of 

 a Mexican railroad built to meet the re- 

 quirements of a mineral region which 

 had been developed at Nacozari, seventy 

 miles south of the international boundary 

 line. At this junction point in the 

 Sulphur Spring Valley, suitable sites 

 were selected for two smelting plants of 

 large size, which were planned by the 

 Copper Queen Company and the Calu- 

 met and Arizona Mining Company. 

 This latter vigorous organization had 

 entered the district in 1898, and has 

 aided in the development of its resources. 

 The two mining companies agreed to 

 cooperate rather than to litigate, and 

 the method has so far worked success- 

 fully. 



The large reduction works at Douglas, 

 Arizona, were planned to smelt in cupola 

 furnaces about fifteen hundred tons of 

 ore per day. But they have grown in 

 size and in complexity of methods, until 

 now there are treated daily twenty-five 

 hundred tons of ore in the cupolas and 



