I 
78 GRAVEL AND PLACER MINING IN ALASKA. [bull. 263. 
Cost per month of steam-shovel ivork at Galesburg, III. — Continued. 
1 switchman, at 20 cents per hour $46. 80 
2 hoist men, at 20 cents per hour (hoist men dump the cars) 93. 60 
1£ tons coal for shovel, at $2 78. 00a 
\ ton coal for locomotive 26. 00: 
1 ton coal for 2 hoists 52. 00 
Total 752. 90« 
Cost per cubic yard 0432sj 
Charges for superintendence, oil, waste, and incidentals are omitted 
from the above. Including these the cost is practically 5 cents a yard. 
The comparison below, however, is based on the figure of 10.0432. 
If two of the trackmen be charged to the shovel, the digging opera- 
tion and transfer from bank to car costs $0.0236, or 54.6 per cent- 
of the operation considered. In other words, the digging here costs 
little more than the long tram, hoisting, and dumping, and thus 
the object of using mechanical appliances is attained. A striking 
comparison is afforded by the cost of operating a placer which uses 
the car-and-incline system and the labor of men to fill the cars. If 
the duty of a man shoveling gravel into a car is taken at 12 cubi 
yards in nine hours, and the men are paid the lowest wage given 
the above tables, namely $42.85 per month, 56 men, say, would beJi 
eniplo3 r ed filling the cars, and the monthly cost would be $2,305, or 
$0,132 per cubic yard, 5.6 times as great as that with the shovel, ol 
S4.8 per cent of the entire operation considered. In Alaska where 
wages for shovelers are from four to six times as great, the percent!! 
age of cost would be much greater. 
Although the cost of 12 cents on Anvil Creek appears attractively 
low, it must be remembered that it does not take into account the> 
labor of shovelers cleaning bed rock after the shovel. This opera- 
tion, unfortunately, can rarely be dispensed with, at least in por-i 
tions of the ground, and it will naturally increase the cost of 
getting the auriferous material into the cars. In some places m 
Alaska the slabs and leaves of bed rock must be scraped with 
brooms in order to recover all the gold. The prospective steam-' 
shovel miner should keep in mind the fact that a machine which will 
handle a large quantity of material, however cheaply, is of no avail 
unless it can succeed in extracting a large percentage of the values. 1 
The steam-shovel plant at the junction of Bear Creek and Klon- 
dike River occupies the flood plain of the latter stream, a fact thai 
influences greatly the economical excavation and disposal of material, 
since both lack of grade for washing gravel and dump for disposal oi 
tailings must be supplied artificially. 
This steam shovel (see PI. XI, B) digs in a pit 20 feet below the sur ; 
face of the flat. The dipper empties into cars which are pushed b) I 
hand to the foot of an incline and raised by steam winch to the plat 
