REVIEWS. ' 417 



of using our present system of weights and measures, with " our long 

 and short tons, our barrels of 200, 280, 300 or 400 lbs, our 

 pounds avoirdupois and our pounds Troy, our bushels of a dozen dif- 

 ferent weights, and our gallons of several incomprehensible kinds"; 

 but the disadvantages of this system have been partly avoided in 

 many cases by giving the statistics in metric measures as well as in our 

 own. 



The question of the cost of production has been given especial 

 prominence in this volume, with a view to showing the reduction in 

 the cost of the crude products. To use the words of the editor: 

 "The itemization of cost is the first essential step in securing economy 

 in producing any article, and the history of every country and of 

 every industry has shown that prosperity, whether national, industrial, 

 or individual, is, in a general way, inversely proportional to the cost 

 of supplying the rest of the world with what one produces. " These 

 reductions are in no way dependent on the reduction of wages. On the 

 contrary, many of the mining industries where the greatest reduction 

 in cost of production has been accomplished, are carried on with high 

 priced labor; and in many other cases, where the wages are not high, the 

 condition of the wage -earners has been greatly improved. The 

 reduction in cost of production has been entirely brought about by 

 improvements in mining machinery, by a more thorough under- 

 standing of the nature of the deposits to be worked, and by more 

 intelligent management and labor. The reduction in cost of pro- 

 duction is nowhere better seen than in the materials most necessary to 

 our welfare. For instance, coal can in some cases be carried by rail 

 for 400 miles and delivered on board vessels for from %2 to $2.25 per 

 ton, and yet the mine owners and railroads make dividends; some of 

 the manufacturing establishments in Western Pennsylvania obtain coal 

 at from 60 to 75 cents per ton at their works; hard gold-bearing 

 quartz can be crushed, washed and 95 per cent, of the gold saved on 

 the plates for I1.25 per ton; high grade Bessemer iron ore can be 

 mined, handled, shipped and delivered a thousand miles from the 

 point of production for less than ^4.00 per ton. All these figures seem 

 almost incredible until one investigates the various devices which the 

 ingenuity and better education of those engaged in the industry have 

 invented for reducing the expenses of production. 



The former annual statistical numbers of the Engineering and 

 Mining Journal were excellent in all they undertook, but the present 



