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T. J. GRIER, 



Superintendent Homestake Mining* Company. 



Forests are important to mining, and benefits accrue to mining from 

 forests, but it is not suiRcient to say so and there stop. The forests 

 are an absolute necessity to the mines. Nor is it true to say that the 

 timber produced by the forests is the only benefit accruing from them. 

 Conservation of moisture by a thrifty growth of trees is to the credit 

 of the forest while alike important and necessary to the mineral 

 industry, and w^hen that moisture is thus conserved it becomes invalu- 

 able as it flows on to such agricultural areas as may be adjacent to the 

 mineral lands. * * m< ^^^ many, perhaps, fully appreciate the 

 enormous quantity of timber needed in and about a great mine in 

 order to carry on its operations and protect the lives of its operatives. 

 The hoisting- works, metallurgical, and other buildings on the surface, 

 which are always in sight, perhaps make the average mind more or 

 less oblivious to the fact that further supplies of the forest product 

 are required with every foot of progress made in penetrating the 

 ground. As the miner's work of taking out the ore advances he sur- 

 rounds himself with a framework of timber, w^hich is intended to hold 

 in place the sides and roofs of his excavations. 



CHARLES D. WAL.COTT, 

 Director United States Geological Survey. 



* * * Abundance of wood is one of the prime necessities for 

 successful mining. There are four chief factors in the mining enter- 

 prise — the value of the ore, the cost of production, the cost of trans- 

 portation, and the cost of reduction ; and the sum of the last three 

 must be less than the first or the mine will be closed. Mining prop- 

 erly understood is a business in which the profits or losses are the 

 result of the balance of these conditions, not an excavation of treasure 

 whose enormous value renders other considerations insignificant. 

 Now, in the three costs mentioned above, the principal elements are 

 water and wood. * ^ * Tj^e miner has a great and vital interest 

 in the permanent preservation of the forests and in their intelligent 

 utilization second only to that of the irrigation farmer. He should 

 be one of the strongest supporters of the Government in its attempts 

 to preserve our woodlands and make them useful to all interests. 



DAVID T. DAY, 



Chief of Division of Mining- and Mineral Resources, United States 



Geolog-ical Survey. 



* * * The miner has established his reputation as a good cus- 

 tomer to the lumberman, and is daily becoming a better customer. 

 * * * For every ton of anthracite coal taken out of the mine we 



