88 ALEXANDER AGASSIZ 



another Quincy A. Shaw and Agassiz's youngest son, 

 Rodolphe, were working into the management and re- 

 lieving the president of many details. 



By 1909 the mine had reached vast proportions ; its 

 lowest point was eight thousand feet on the lode, and 

 the area of the territory that had been mined and 

 opened up on the conglomerate lode could be measured 

 in square miles, whose shafts and drifts must amount 

 to fully two hundred miles of passages, from which 

 about thirty-seven million tons of rock have been mined. 

 While on an underlying amygdaloid lode, opened in later 

 years, are many more miles of openings in what is prac- 

 tically a new mine which promises to rival in magnitude 

 the old conglomerate lode. At the time of Agassiz's 

 death, the company (exclusive of the subsidiary com- 

 panies) employed an army of fifty-six hundred men, and 

 was mining the vast amount of about ninety-three hun- 

 dred tons a day! This is believed to be the largest 

 amount of rock mined and treated by any mine up to 

 that time. The product of refined copper for that year 

 was 82,816,230 pounds. The scale of the equipment 

 may be judged from the fact that one of the pumps at 

 the mills * had a greater capacity than any in existence, 

 until its designer, Mr. E. D. Leavitt, built a larger one 

 for the pumping station of the Boston Sewerage Depart- 

 ment. Since Hecla paid its first dividend in 1869, the 

 company had paid to its stockholders, up to December 

 31, 1909, the huge sum of $110,550,000. 



It is conceivable that a less far-sighted policy might 

 possibly have enabled the company to have made even 

 greater returns in the past. But Agassiz was building 

 not only for future years, but for a future generation, 



1 The Calumet Mill was moved to Torch Lake in 1871. 



