86 ALEXANDER AGASSIZ 



months later be retired to the board of directors, and 

 Agassiz -was made president, a position which he held to 

 the end of his life. 



A detailed account of the development of the mine, 

 from such comparatively modest beginnings to the gigan- 

 tic enterprise that it afterward became, would swell 

 the present volume beyond all reasonable proportions. 

 Until a few years before Mr. Shaw's death in 1908, he 

 and Agassiz directed the policy of the company, but as 

 the former had no training as an engineer, the work of 

 developing the mine itself fell to Agassiz. It was always 

 his policy to keep the mine opened up well ahead of the 

 work, — fifteen or twenty years ahead in later years, — 

 and when it became certain that the lode contained 

 a vast amount of profitable rock, he had the ability to 

 see what the conditions would be years later, and make 

 ready for them far in advance. 



Such a policy naturally incurred great expense, for, 

 to use his own words, he always spent a dollar and a 

 half if he could see three dollars in the future. Most 

 people, however, were not far-sighted enough to be able 

 to see the three dollars, and there was no little criticism 

 of the extravagant management of the mine, much of 

 which came from the very men who had formerly de- 

 clared that the lode could not be mined at a profit. For 

 example, the installation in 1883 of the five thousand 

 horse-power " Superior," a huge engine for those days, 

 was thought at the time by many people a foolish pro- 

 ceeding. It was designed to hoist six skips, each with a 

 capacity of four tons of rock, from a depth of four 

 thousand feet, and also to run four Rand compressors. 

 This was greatly in excess of the needs of the mine then, 

 which was hoisting two and a half ton skips from an 



