378 ANNUAL REPORT SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION, 1914. 
pl. 5.) It is an immense structure weighing some 2,000 tons and 
cost nearly £100,000, but its efficiency is marvellous. It dredges 
11,300 yards per day and goes Sunday and Saturday for 250 days a 
year from March till nearly Christmas, when the weather becomes too 
severe. The buckets scrape all they can reach, including blocks of the 
bedrock, and to test their efficiency we are told that a man twice 
threw a small coin about as large as a threepenny piece into the water, 
and each time it was brought up and recovered in the rifles along with 
the gold. The whole machinery is controlled by one man, the dredgs- 
master, who has 10 men under him—3 winchmen who are paid $6 
(25s.) a day; three oilers, at $4.50 (18s. 6d.), and 4 deck hands, at 
$4.80 (about 20s.).. The winchmen and oilers work in three shifts of 
8 hours, and the deck hands two shifts of 12 hours. The cost of 
dredging a cubic yard is 6 cents (3d.), and the average value of the gold 
is 28 cents, so that the gross profit is 22 cents (11d.). On the 11,300 
cubic yards dredged this gives a daily gross profit of a little over £500, 
so that it is obvious with gravel of this value there is a very handsome 
annual return, and indeed it would pay well to dredge much poorer 
stuff, of which no doubt there is still abundance. 
We are often told by politicians of a certain class that wealth is the 
result of manual labor only. Here we find a notable proof that such 
shallow philosophy is based on a pure fallacy. The laborers got all 
they could and wasted most of it. It was only when capital and 
brains, and especially the latter, came to the rescue that the Klondike 
goldfield was saved from absolute extinction and granted a new and 
prosperous lease of life. 
The price of the dredger does not, however, nearly represent the 
whole of the capital involved. The plant is worked by electric power 
derived from the upper part of the Klondike River, as there is not 
nearly enough local fuel available for steam-raismg purposes. The 
water is taken from the North Fork of the Klondike by the Granville 
Power Co. and conveyed through a ditch 6 miles long to a point where 
there is an effective head of 228 feet. By means of turbines and a 
10,000-horsepower plant the current is generated at 2,200 volts and 
stepped up to 33,000 volts. It is conveyed over two main distributing 
lines, one of which runs down to the mouth of the Klondike River and 
the other over the watershed to the basin of the Indian River. This 
great installation supplies electricity, not only to the Boyle Co. dredg- 
ers, but to other public and private consumers in the district. As 
there is neither cheap fuel nor water power in the immediate neighbor- 
hood of Dawson City, it is obvious that this source of power and light 
is of the highest importance to the district. 
The greatest achievement in the way of hydraulics is to be seen in 
the works of the Yukon Gold Co., an American firm belonging chiefly 
to Messrs. Guggenheim. As there are no local falls to provide water 
