A HISTORY OF CORNWALL 



Before closing we have to consider what is 

 perhaps the most noteworthy feature of Cornish 

 tin mining at present, namely, the relations 

 between tinner and smelter. Originally, as 

 stated, the miner smelted his own ores, but 

 blowing-houses, when established, became separate 

 ventures, the owners fusing the miners' tin for a 

 percentage of the product, 1 the smelter having 

 bargained for the parcel brought him, and given 

 his note to deliver the quantity of white tin 

 agreed upon at the ensuing coinage. 3 These 

 notes, which were transferable by endorsement, 3 

 the tinners, being usually in want of ready money, 

 sold to the merchant dealers, as we have already 

 seen. In the eighteenth century, however, came 

 a change, the merchant dealers giving place to 

 the smelters, who, from that day, have acted as 

 financiers of the stannaries. At first, the smel- 

 ters simply bought back, at a discount, their notes 

 from the tin owners, 4 and as long as the coin- 

 age system continued this system of indirect pur- 

 chase was bound to continue ; for to buy an article 

 of fluctuating price, which could not be sold save 

 at periodical coinages, would have been too 

 speculative a business for the smelter to under- 

 take. To the tinner it obviously made no differ- 

 ence where he took his ore, inasmuch as all the 

 smelters made similar assays and charged the 

 same toll. 6 Since the abolition of the coinage, 

 the smelters have laid aside their former methods 

 and bought the ore from the mine owner 

 direct. 



To understand how heavily this bears upon 

 the mines, it will be necessary to examine more 

 closely into the conditions under which the ore 

 is sold. Of these, the chief is known as the Tin 

 Standard. This is an amount paid by the 

 smelter per hundredweight of metal contained 

 in the ore, as calculated from a dry assay, after 

 the deduction of one and one-fourth from the 

 product for every twenty for returning charges. 8 

 By an old custom there is also a deduction on 

 the weight of the parcel of tin ore of three 

 pounds per hundredweight, and it is customary 

 also to reckon the price by the nearest eighth of 

 a pound above or below the calculated price. 



These provisions are anything but fair. The 

 smelter buys, not on actual contents of the ore, 

 but on the contents he assumes he will recover 

 by the process of smelting. The difference 

 between that and the wet assay, which gives the 

 actual contents of the ore, is variously stated at 

 from five to ten per cent, in favour of the latter, 

 but as we have to deal with commercial values 

 that consideration may for the present be dis- 

 missed, by taking it for granted that the smelter 



1 Add. MS. 6682, fol. 297. 



8 Borlase, Natural Hist, of Cornwall, 1 8 1 . 



3 Pryce, Mineralogia Cornubiensis, 292. 



4 Ibid. 292, 293. 



6 ' The System of Selling Tin Ore in Cornwall,' 

 Salmon's Mining and Smelting Magazine, v, 6-8. 



5 Cornish Mining, 1 6. 



loses such a percentage in the process of smelting, 

 and is therefore entitled to this allowance. 7 



But this is not all which the smelter claims, 

 for since the standard is the price which he pays 

 for the metallic contents of the ore, it follows 

 that the difference between such a price and that 

 at which he sells (the market value) represents 

 gross profits. 



A second consideration is the ' returning 

 charges,' or the assumed cost of smelting, 

 deducted in mineral from each batch of black tin 

 sold by the miner. To be fair the charges for 

 smelting should be upon a cash basis, varying 

 solely with the rise or fall in the cost of labour, 

 fuel and fluxes. As it is in kind, the higher the 

 price of black tin the higher the price which the 

 miner must pay the smelter. 8 Thus the miners 

 in the years of 1883 to 1900, paid a yearly 

 average of forty per cent, over even what the 

 smelters claimed as their actual cost, 9 and the 

 returning charge which, according to the 

 standard, the miner believes to be only six and 

 one-fourth per cent., because it is one and one- 

 fourth per cent, of twenty, is on an average 

 quality of black tin really ten per cent. 9 



By ' draftage,' another trade custom, the 

 smelter is allowed three pounds per hundred- 

 weight on every parcel of black tin he buys. 

 At its inception this was given for ' the turn of 

 the scale ' on all the black tin purchased by the 

 smelter, on condition that he allowed the same 

 draftage on all the white tin he delivered. In 

 the days of barter, pure and simple, the arrange- 

 ment was perfectly equitable, but with the pass- 

 ing of the coinage dues the smelter, who might 

 reasonably have been expected either to abolish 

 draftage in its entirety or retain it so, continued 

 to enforce the clause so far as receiving it from 

 the miner was concerned, while he waived it in 

 his delivery of white tin. It can easily be 

 figured that the miner, under the draftage allow- 

 ance, has to turn over to the smelter the rough 

 equivalent of five per cent, in cash on his 

 gross turnover, while the smelter will have the 

 assurance that, even at the worst of times, the 

 allowance is not likely to be worth less than 

 forty-four per cent, on his working costs (as it 

 was in 1896), and, with a good price for tin, it 

 may be worth ninety-three, as it was in igoo. 10 

 The smelter is sure of a handsome profit, there- 

 fore, even when the miner works at a loss. 



The actual loss of metal in the smelting of 

 the tin has never been accurately determined ; u 

 but, in any case, it is a question for which the 



7 Cornish Mining, 1 6. 



8 Ibid. 1 6. Four pounds sterling per ton of 

 metal would be a liberal estimate of the cost of 

 smelting, yet, since 1883, only once has the smelter 

 received less, while, on an average, he received almost 

 fifty per cent. more. 



9 Cornish Mining, 1 7. 

 10 Ibid. 1 8. " Ibid. 20. 



562 



