GENERAL REPORT. 
47 
been conducted, until very recentl}^, by individuals, and in the 
most irregular, hap-hazard, and wasteful manner—very much 
like our flxrming. The proprietor of lands having found what 
seemed to be a rich deposit, rallied a small force of practical 
miners, sunk a shaft a few feet to the first rich vein., worked 
away until he had realized five, ten or twenty thousand dol¬ 
lars from his mine, and then abandoned it for other richer de¬ 
posits. Thorough, systematic, exhaustive mining has been 
utterly unknown. 
Within a very short time, however, several strong compa¬ 
nies, backed by Eastern capital and directed by science, com¬ 
bined with practical skill, have purchased territory and begun 
operations in a manner that augurs well, not only for their par¬ 
ticular success, but for the future of mining in Wisconsin. 
Instead of mere vertical shafts, through which alone access 
was had to the mines, and up which all the mineral and sur¬ 
plus water had to be raised by hand or horse-power, these 
companies, by tunnelling into the deposits upon which the 
shaft descends, are enabled through the adit thus made, not 
only to effect complete and economical drainage and ventila¬ 
tion of their mines, but likewise to draw off the mineral on 
on tram-ways, at a vastly greater advantage than was possible 
under the old method of hoisting. Not only so, these compa¬ 
nies are making clean work as they go ; taking out not sim¬ 
ply the richly paying lead ore, to the total neglect of every¬ 
thing else, as was formerly the practice, but also carefully sav¬ 
ing all the zinc ores, which, in the form of the carbonate (“ dry 
bone”) and sulphuret (“black jack”), are not unfrequently 
found in larger quantities than the lead, and which, since the 
establishment of zinc furnaces and zinc-white manufactories, 
at Mineral Point and La Salle, have a value of one-fourth to 
one-half that of the lead ores, so long the exclusive object of 
the miner’s search. 
One of these companies—the Mineral Point Mining Co., 
chartered in 1865—reported a handsome per cent, on its entire 
capital stock the second year after its organization, and has 
since been making a steady and highly profitable development 
