458 
MANGAKESE DEPOSITS OF ITfDIA : ECONOMICS. [PaRT III : 
' Keeping in view these three stages of manganese-mining — high-grade oxide 
ores, low-grade oxide-ores, and silicate-orcs, being each in turn the substance sought — 
It can confidently be predicted that manganese- " quarrying," and later on j^erhaps, 
manganese- " mining," has in India a long and prosperous future with possibly, 
however, bad times at intervals. 
* Xevertheless, it would not be out of place to draw attention to the desirability 
of stocking the low-grade and silicate-ores separately from the country-rock of quart- 
zite, mica-schist, gneiss or lithomarge, with which they are often indiscriminately 
mixed when consigned to the waste-heaps. 
' Another aspect of the question has already been noticed by Mr. HoUa'idi, namely 
the heavy loss which India, to all intents and purposes, suffers by exporting the raw 
ore. The averf.ge price that Indian manganese-ore fetches at its destination is about 
Rs. 30 per ton, and of this only about one-half goes to India, being divided between 
railways, carters, miners and land-owners. The remaining Rs. 15 goes mainly in 
freight charges. The mananese then comes back to India in the form of the steel 
it has helped to make, and In iia pays both the foreign manufacturer's profits and 
the cost of return carriage. A. recent quotation in the Engineering and. Mining 
Jonrnal"^ gives the price per ton of 80 °o ferro-manganese as S85 to Si 75, equi- 
valent to about Rs. 265 to Rs. 546. It becomes obvious from this how desirable it 
is to manufacture ferro-manganese in India and thus keep in the country a proportion 
of the profits involved in its manufacture, even if the larger proportion of the 
ferro-manganese so made has still to be exported. The time must come, how 
ever, when the manufacture of iron and steel will be one of India's most 
important industries, and then, of course, India will consume a large proportion 
of its own ferro-manganese.' 
The foregoing needs no modification except as regards the estimate, 
wliich is of course only a guess, as to how long it will take to work out 
the deposits at present known by open-cast methods. The guess given 
is 30 to 50 years. Considering the sudden leap in the Indian production 
for 1906 and the fact that the production for 1907 is even larger, 
it seems as if India has captured a considerable proportion of the 
world's market, so that even with the drop in prices recently experienced 
(end of 1907 and beginning of 1908) the production is not Ukcly for the 
next few years to fall as low f ven as the figure for 1905, Bearing 
this in view I think that the 30 to 50 years is probably an over-estimate 
and that 20 to 30 would be a truer one for the number of years required 
for the working out of the ores at present in sight by open-cast methods. 
When I wrote the above, however, I had not seen the Sandur deposits. 
There can be no doubt as to existence of large quantities of 
manganese-ore — mostly second-grade, however — in the hills of this State. 
Making allowance for these I should be inclined to somewhat increase 
the estimate again, but not up to its former amount. With regard to 
the loss that India suffers by the export of manganese-ore in the raw 
condition see pages 541 — 3. 
1 Rc. O^ol. Surv. I rid., XXXII, p. 62, (1905) 
2 Jan. 27th. 1900, p. 212. 
