pessimistic views in respect to the future of mining in Japan. These views 

 could not but gain strength from the circumstance, that the mines, which the 

 government had commenced to work by modern methods, did not j'ield such 

 surplus as had been anticipated. The principal reason thereof is this, that it is 

 only in later years, that the government has become possessed of really good 

 mines, and that it formerly, if it at all wanted to set private industry a good 

 example, and to create something new, had to devote its attention to mines of 

 inferior importance. 



If the development of private mining and metallurgical industry has not kept 

 pace with other industries of similar moment, several circumstances are the cause 

 of this. In the first place, even the best mine will always require a consider- 

 able outlay of capital, if it is to be organized on modern sj-steiu. That capital 

 either did not exist, because the mines mostly belong to single individuals, 

 and association into companies is only in its infancy, while foreign capital is by 

 law strictly excluded from the mines or where it perhaps might have been raised, 

 capitalists were afraid of the risk, the more so as the not very brilliant results 

 obtained by the government were not of a nature to encourage imitation. It 

 was therefore^prefered to go on in the old fashion, which although defective re- 

 quires only a small outlay of capital, and to be content with a small profit. 



Another reason is this : mining and reduction works, if they are to have any 

 prospect of success, require much more than any other techuical establish- 

 ment to be adopted to local circumstances. An engine — , gas — , cloth — , paper 

 — , soda-factory, a silk-reeling establishment &c. in the South of Japau is 

 not necessarily in any essential part different from a similar establishment in 

 the North, while the arrangements for instance of two establishments for the 

 reduction of silver-ores present a quite different aspect according to local 

 circumstances, and thus we see here, how in six different mines : Ikuno, Sado, 

 Kosaka, Innai, Mandokora, Ani the silver is extracted from the ore in quite 

 different ways. Thorough innovations are therefore much easier adopted in any 

 other technical establishment than in mining. And nevertheless, it is under 

 present circumstances of the greatest importance that this be done, that is, 

 that a rational working system be extended also to private establishments, other- 

 wise the entire mining industry in this country must gradually decline. For- 

 merly, when the country was closed to the outer world, the internal mining in- 

 dustry governed, so to speak, the metal market, that is, the price of metal 

 depended — letting alone other circumstances, which are still unaltered— on the 

 cost of production ; now the price is influenced from abroad, and it is evident, 

 that with the constant rise in wages here and in the price of charcoal, a point 

 must be reached, where only the richer mines will be able to compete with 

 the foreign mines, which are worked in a rational manner, while the poorer 



