ART. III. MINING SCHOOLS IN THE UNITED STATES.

IN the year 1714 the English Parliament offered the sum of twenty thousand pounds to the discoverer of any means by which the captain of a ship at sea could determine his position on the ocean within thirty miles. Not even this shining reward-the greatest, perhaps, ever offered for a scientific discovery, and at that time a fortune in itself-could effect the object. A method was proposed, but the committee to which it was referred declared that no astronomical tables existed of sufficient correctness to make it of any value. With the best data the world then possessed, the error might be as great as nine hundred miles;* and to bring it down even to two hundred miles, an extensive series of new observations of the heavenly bodies must be undertaken. Charles II., to whom the report was made, is said to have exclaimed on reading the letter, "But I must have them observed"; and he thereupon founded the Observatory at Greenwich, an institution to which every nation that has a marine owes an incalculable debt for the commercial prosperity it enjoys, and upon which the sailor in every clime depends for the safety and certainty with which he traverses the ocean. From thirty per cent per voyage-the rate of insurance when Greece was in her glory—to the three and five per cent which is now current, the decrease of the expenses of commerce has kept perfect time with the march of scientific investigation and the founding of seats of scientific learning.

Commissioner Ross Browne, in his report on our Western mines, says that experienced investors in mining property will not pay for a mine more than two and a half times its yearly profit. That is to say, they do not consider it a safe investment unless it returns forty per cent upon its cost. The reason of this is plain. With no means of educating miners to their work, the conduct of mines in this country is a lamentable story of mismanagement, energy wrongly directed, and consequent great losses. The thousand millions of gold dollars that have been won from the ground in California are but an

* Dr. F. A. P. Barnard, LL. D., F. S., T. D., in his Letter to the Board of Trustees of the University of Mississippi, 1858.

inadequate representation of the real wealth that existed there. Observers have estimated the losses which were at first caused by ignorant and hasty methods of working at two thirds of the gold really at hand, and none have put them at less than one half. A better state of affairs has gradually grown up, but the losses to this day are very much larger than they should be. In California, however, the work has been easy to that called for by more difficult ores in Nevada, Montana, and Colorado; and if an investigation could be had of the exact proportion of precious metal saved to the quantity in the ore, the story would be astonishing even to scientific men. Without careful proof it is impossible to make men believe the reports of the few competent observers who have been there, so apparently incredible are the results of recklessness and want of knowledge. It was difficult to introduce even the thinnest entering-wedge of common sense into this hard prejudice against skill and study. For a long time the miners refused all help from schools or scholars; but the experience of continual trouble with their ores, and the gradually developed fact that they often lost more than they gained, has worked a complete revolution and a beginning having been made in New York in 1864, a number of schools of mines, more or less praiseworthy, have been founded in various parts of the United States. In Europe schools of this kind are among the oldest institutions of advanced learning, and our educators naturally look to them as the models upon which our own constructions must be shaped. It is proposed in this paper to point out their peculiarities, and to discuss the requirements of similar schools in this country.

Like all other educational institutions, schools of mines in Europe form part of the system of government; but unlike the others, their officers, instead of belonging to the department of education, are connected with that of mines. That is to say, schools of this class are regarded as investments which are necessary to make mining either profitable or possible. To the knowledge of which they are the source the mines of Europe are indebted for their ability to work low-grade ores; and were that knowledge to be now eliminated and the world thrown back to its resources of a century ago, hundreds of mines would have to be given up, and bread would be taken from a hundred thousand mouths.

Three kinds of schools are found, - primary, middle, and high schools or academies. The lower schools are among the most peculiar and interesting institutions for education in the world. Wherever there are government mining works of importance, and in some of the great private works schools are established for teaching workmen of a certain grade the secrets of their calling. They are called in Germany Bergschüle, in contradistinction to the high-grade schools, which always bear the name Bergakademie. The teachers employed in them are the officers of the works, who usually devote two hours two or three days in each week to giving plain but strictly scientific explanations of the operations which go on in the furnaces, and of methods of attack in the mine.

The nature of the studies naturally depends upon the occupation of the scholar. Those who work in the mines receive instruction in mining alone; and this instruction, instead of being general and intended to fit the learner for the practice of all kinds of mining, is altogether special, and confined pretty closely to work in mines of the kind in which he is employed.

So, too, in the metallurgical department, the instructor makes no effort to lay down a full course of metallurgy, but aims to make his hearers understand the furnaces at which they daily labor, the nature of the chemical changes produced, the method of dealing with accidents, exact details of construction, and the like. Thus, instead of being eclectic and scientific, the instruction is confined to imparting the traditions of the particular establishment to which the school is attached. In this system we have one cause of that remarkable conservation of distinct methods of treatment which, until late years, has been so great a hindrance to German metallurgy, and has prevented the study and adoption in one quarter of improvements made in another.

Still, the information gained in these places is a great advance on ignorance, pure and simple; and these schools are as much above nothingness as the Bergakademien, the centres of science and research, are above them. The listeners to these lectures are men who, having had in their youth the minimum of education required by law, have, in a long course of severe manual labor, lost almost all trace of what little scientific or

general information they ever gained. It is a long ladder by which a man climbs up to a position in which he has the right to attend these lectures. Entering a metallurgical work, a young man first spends two or three years in wheeling slag to the waste-heap; then as much more time at each of the following steps: wheeling ore to the mixing-bed, shovelling ore into the weighing-bucket, weighing ore, throwing ore into the furnace. Here his progress is slower, and he may remain at the last employment five or ten years. Finally he becomes smelter or tapper of the furnace. The uneducated man can rise no higher. The educated man spends much less time at each of these grades, but go through them he must. He usually spends two or three years in all at the practical work, and then performs clerical duties in the office. Rising higher

and higher, he may in time become director of a smelting establishment or a mining district. The director of the worldfamous mines around Clausthal, Andreasberg, and Altenau, in the Upper Harz Mountains, is an instance. He was a picker of ore in his boyhood. Plattner, a thorough chemist, founder of the analysis with the blowpipe, and an elegant as well as scientific writer on chemistry, began in the same way.

Schools of this primary class are composed of the educated and uneducated men, who have been fellow-workmen in the same mine, at the same furnace; but the former sit in the rostrum, the latter on the benches. The classes are composed of men who have spent fifteen to twenty-five years in the most trying manual labor. The refinements of science, if explained to them, would fall on dull ears. But they have been familiar all their lives with certain phenomena of the bowels of the earth, or others of intensely heated furnaces, and these things they are both interested in and can learn about. A simple course in the rudiments of chemistry, physics, machines, and mining engineering, with more careful explanations of that particular portion of these arts which comes under their own observation, teaches them to go about their work understandingly, and to lay aside that vague fear, which the untaught often have in the presence of great and, to them, mysterious operations of nature or of art. It adds also greatly to their efficiency as workmen, and their safety in circumstances of danger.

In these remarks on this lowest grade of mining schools, we desire to be far from underrating the value and ability of the lecturers. In small and obscure mountain towns men are found who, in the midst of incessant physical and administrative labor, have kept up with the march of science, and taken care not only to make the latest truths of science known to their hearers, but also to apply them in the conduct of the works in their charge. Applied science owes to them some of the most remarkable discoveries that have been made; and they may fairly be said to have done more than their brethren of the closet in developing arts, which besides a knowledge of science in its theory require also a minute conversance with its practice. Von Born, Augustin, and Ziervogel, whose labors in one branch of metallurgy— that of the extraction of silver— were so valuable, were all directors of works.

The next grade of school is one where young men, the sons of miners or smelters, and who may or may not have been employed in their boyhood in the works, obtain a higher kind. of instruction. They are not, as are the learners in the lower school, mere workmen, but may rise to any height, though their future is usually that of overseers or directors of small works. These institutions are still called Bergschüle; but the student spends all his time at study, is instructed in general mineralogy, metallurgy, chemistry, etc. Indeed, his own abilities are the only boundary to his advance. Often the successful student wins the prize of a year or two at an Akademie, and has the advantage of a thorough scientific education.

These two varieties of schools are united as at Eisleben and Halle in Prussia, Chemnitz in Hungary, Pribram in Bohemia, etc.; or only the first kind is found, as at Agordo in Italy, Waldenberg in Silesia, and many other places. Finally, one or both will be found united with a great Bergakademie, as at Freiberg and at Clausthal. Russia, where everything is supposed to be perfect in system, has one Bergakademie, ten firstclass and a hundred second-class Bergschüle. Prussia has two Akademien, two first-class and ten second-class Schüle. The other states of Europe have also taken similar care to educate their miners of all grades.

Of the mining academies four may be considered as of