A HISTORY OF CORNWALL 



with rubbish meant extra expense in dressing, 

 and caused considerable waste, as, when so 

 much washing was necessary, the finer parts 

 of the ore were liable to be carried off by the 

 water. 1 



The downward slope began to be abandoned 

 towards the end of the eighteenth century 2 for 

 the system which prevails at present, namely, 

 that of driving levels and stoping upwards. As 

 soon as a shaft is sunk to sufficient depths be- 

 neath the adit, a level is commenced upon the 

 lode, and carried both east and west. If the 

 latter is rich at the commencement of the level 

 as the workman goes forward, another is em- 

 ployed to dig down the ore above the level, and, 

 as he makes progress, a third follows him in 

 another stope, and so they proceed, until the 

 intermediate part of the lode (or as much of it 

 as is productive of ore) is wholly removed. 3 

 Meanwhile the shaft becomes deep enough 

 for several other levels long before the ore 

 above the first is exhausted. If the lode is 

 poor in the first level nothing more is done. 

 If it becomes productive in some parts at a 

 distance from the shaft, there the miners begin 

 to stope. 



The advantages of this system are several. 

 In the first place it is easy to find what part of 

 the lode is rich and what barren, and the miners 

 have it in their power to take away the valuable 

 parts and leave the worthless. Even the latter 

 are useful, as they serve the purpose of timber in 

 keeping the mines open. Every part of the 

 works is better drained. The ore, by being 

 taken from the lode when comparatively dry, is 

 more easily kept separate from the worthless 

 ground, and is therefore subject to little waste 

 and costs much less to dress. The riches of the 

 lode may be extracted more speedily, and the 

 produce is far less fluctuating. The ability 

 exists also to make greater efforts for the dis- 

 covery of new bunches of ore in other parts of 

 the lode, and, as a general consequence, the 

 mine is not only more profitable but much more 

 permanent. 4 



I have left until the last the history of the 

 internal organization of the mines and of the 

 classes who operated them. To trace through 

 a thousand years the development of the tin 

 works from shallow pits owned and worked by 

 groups of labourers to the vast companies of to- 

 day which employ in their works thousands of 

 hired labourers, is a task which calls for great 

 discrimination, and which, perhaps, may be best 

 accomplished by a reversal of the usual order of 



1 ' Improvements in Mining,' by Jos. Carne, Trans. 

 Roy. Geol. Soc. Cornto. iii, 6970. 



3 Worth, Historical Notes concerning the Progress of 

 Mining Skill, 14. 



3 ' Improvements in Mining,' by Jos. Carne, Trans. 

 Roy. Geol. Soc. Cornw. iii, 70. 



4 Ibid. 70, 71. Hunt, British Mining, 602 et seq. 



procedure, and an exposition first of the present 

 and then of the past. 



The mines to-day are run either as corpora- 

 tions, 5 or, by virtue of local mining law, as cost- 

 book companies. 6 The latter form is the older 

 of the two. Under the cost-book system two or 

 three men secure a lease of a property 7 and in- 

 duce some others to join them ; if the property 

 seems promising, these few would include a 

 banker, a smelter } an iron, timber, candle, and 

 cordage merchant, and possibly a dealer in new 

 and second-hand machinery. They then register, 

 under the cost-book, a company of, say, 512 

 shares, and are ready to begin business. They 

 hold a meeting, elect a purser to manage the 

 accounts, and call up, say, 1 per share. At the 

 next meeting perhaps a call of i or more is 

 made, and so matters continue until one of three 

 things happens : the mine becomes self-support- 

 ing ; it earns profits, in which case there is a 

 division ; there comes a call to which the chief 

 adventurer refuses to respond, in which case if 

 the others refuse, or are unable, to take up the 

 defaulter's shares, the mine closes. If the pro- 

 ceeds from the sale of lease and machinery are 

 insufficient to liquidate the mine's liabilities, then 

 the adventurers are called upon to contribute 

 pro rata ; and as long as a single moneyed man 

 remains among them the creditors are sure of 

 recovering. Such is the system as it was in the 

 days when Cornish tin mining was at its height. 

 With the advent of modern speculative enter- 

 prise the number of shareholders has increased 8 

 in most cost-book concerns, and 'out-adventurers' 9 

 have entered that is, partners not residing in 

 the district. A new system has now become 

 engrafted upon the old, and the general body of 

 adventurers usually delegate their powers to a 

 managing committee, 10 consisting as a rule of the 

 largest resident shareholders. 



In spite of these changes, however, the under- 

 taking has remained quite unlike the usual cor- 

 poration or partnership, and its main features still 

 hold true. These are : first, absence of fixed 

 capital ; secondly, the right to transfer shares by 

 giving written notice to the purser, 11 and without 

 the consent of one's partners ; thirdly, the right 

 of any adventurer to relinquish his interest upon 



5 James, Pseudo-Cost-Book Companies, 22. 



6 The Companies Act of 1 862 brought the limited 

 liability system into the stannaries. Before that, all 

 the mines were cost-book concerns (Rep. on Stannary 

 Act Amend. Bill (1887), Q. 119). 



7 Cornish Mining, 1 1 ; Bartlett, Treatise on British 

 Mining, 24. 



8 Cost-book companies are now so extensive that 

 meetings are usually held, not monthly, but at in- 

 tervals of sixteen weeks, so as to allow distant share- 

 holders to attend (Rep. on Stannary Act Amend. Bill 

 (1887), Q. 17). 



9 James, Pseudo-Cost-Book Companies, 3 1 . 



10 Watson, Compendium of Brit. Mining, \ i . 



11 Pike, Britain's Metal Mines, 52. 



554 



