METALLIC PRODUCTS. 15 



pupils; a high school, costing $50,000; five churches, costing from $3,000 

 to $40,000 ; and three hospitals, in one of which 3,000 patients were treated 

 during the year. In 1880 $1,400,000 were expended in new buildings and 

 improvements. It had 14 smelters, with an aggregate of 37 shaft-furnaces, 

 of which 24 were in active operation during the census year, and its produc- 

 ing mines may be roughly estimated at 30. 



Production. The amount that is annually added to the metallic wealth of 

 the world by the Leadville district, the productive area of whose deposits 

 as at present opened may be estimated at about a square mile, is truly 

 remarkable. Its annual silver product alone is greater than that given by 

 official estimates for any of the silver-producing nations of the world out- 

 side of the United States except Mexico. Its lead product, on the other 

 hand, though frequently neglected in estimating the total value of its out- 

 put, is nearly equal to that of all England, and, of other nations outside of 

 the United States, it is only exceeded by that of Spain and Germany. 



In the magnitude of its product Leadville has been only surpassed in 

 the United States by the famous Comstock lode in the Washoe district of 

 Nevada, and the surprising rapidity of its development in the few years of 

 its existence has been even more remarkable than that of the latter, which 

 produced forty- eight millions of gold and silver during the five years suc- 

 ceeding its discovery. The third district of comparable importance in the 

 magnitude of its product from a comparatively restricted area is the Eureka 

 district of Nevada, which, according to Mr. Curtis, has, in the first fourteen 

 years of its existence, produced sixty millions of gold and silver and 225,000 

 tons of lead. 1 



Owing to the want of any general law compelling producers to fur- 

 nish an exact and sworn statement of the amount of their annual product, 

 it is impossible to obtain anything more than an approximate estimate of 

 the metallic production of a mining district like Leadville. Such an esti- 

 mate varies necessarily in the closeness of its approximation, with the care 

 with which it is made, with the accuracy with which the records of indi- 

 vidual mines and smelters have been kept, and with the readiness shown 



1 J. S. Curtis, Silver-lead Deposits of Eureka. Washington, 1884. 



