CONSERVATION OF NATURAL RESOURCES—DOUGLAS. 821 
Though the Old Dominion Consolidated Company has explored its 
property to the sixteenth level, between 100 and 200 tons daily are 
imported from California and Bisbee, the company’s own mines pro- 
ducing only about 60 per cent of the sulphur required by the furnaces. 
And at least one of the Clifton smelting companies is obliged to draw 
daily from abroad by railroad about 160 tons of sulphides high in 
sulphur and low in copper. It follows, therefore, that there was no 
alternative in the early. days between either suspending operations 
or making copper in the wasteful manner which the companies then 
pursued. 
Looking at the situation from the standpoint of to-day, if we place 
the advantages and disadvantages side by side, we have on the side 
of the advantages: 
1. The experience which was gained during that long period of 
adversity, which is now being turned to good account, not only by the 
original companies, but by the many other enterprises which have 
entered the same field and are profiting by the losses of the pioneers. 
2. The southern portion of the territory has increased in popula- 
tion and in wealth, mainly through the exertions of these copper com- 
panies, even while they were losing money on the copper produced. 
They not only employed thousands of men, but they made a market 
for the agricultural development of the small amount of arable land 
within reach of the mines. Had the mines of Globe and Clifton not 
been operated because pecuniarily unsuccessful, and had not the 
shareholders been willing to accept hopeful promises in lieu of divi- 
dends, Arizona would not to-day be making an unanswerable plea 
for admission to the Union as a State. 
3. The ultimate success has been due to the advent of the railroad; 
for railroads are seldom built into unproductive regions in the expec- 
tation of creating traffic that does not exist. 
If we turn to the disadvantages, they are, of course, palpable. At 
the present time, when we are matting our copper ores instead of 
making black copper direct, the slags from those three groups of 
copper furnaces run from 0.4 to 0.5 per cent of copper. Even when 
the slags are re-treated, copper in the slags resulting from the slag 
treatment runs higher than in slags from the treatment of ore, owing 
to the difficulty of reducing silicates. Thus, when the slags are re- 
treated, there is the double waste of fuel and the double waste of labor. 
Even supposing that our economic system were different, and that 
necessity did not drive public corporations to utilize wastefully the 
resources they acquire, I think that the balance of advantage to the 
country at large, as well as to the district, would indicate that it is 
better to make progress and thereby gain experience, even at the ex- 
pense of such waste as I above indicate, rather than stand still and do 
