per cent was required.[1] The production per month in 1913 averaged 2000 tons of ore. In former days ore was sent to Swansea, on the western edge of the South Wales coal field. It is now sent to New York chiefly. A few other productive mines exist in the vicinity of the railroad, but there are also a considerable number today paralyzed by high freight rates that could be profitably worked if in touch with a railroad. ‘The small mines suffer, too, from lack of capital to tide over bad seasons. This is one reason why the Copiapó Mining Company has been able to establish the unique record of a continuous existence for a century. Furthermore, the small mine is extinguished by a fall in the market. Capital is the chief hope for revival of the industry that attained its maxi- mum development in 1876.
Overshadowing the smaller operations once characteristic of Chilean mining are the great copper mines of Braden, south of Santiago, and of Chuquicamata, near Calama. Deposits of ore of mountainous proportions are worked in both places by modern mining and metallurgical plants representing an in- vestment of capital on a large scale. The technical methods employed enable the use of low-grade ores, and the scale of the enterprise supports a lay-out of roads, railways, and port facilities which the scattered and smaller mines of earlier years could not command.
The Record of a Hundred Years
At Copiapó I had the good fortune to discover a great mass of buried treasure in the form of records and correspondence extending over almost a hundred years, and pertaining to the affairs of the Copiapó valley and especially the business of the principal copper mining company here. The present name of the company is “The Copper Mines of Copiapó, Ltd.” In the early days of its history it was called “The Copiapó Mining
- ↑ Singewald and Miller give the instance of the Esploradora Mine in the department of Chafiaral, where the product shipped in 1913 averaged 20 per cent copper. “More than 75,000 tons of 7 to 8 per cent copper ores remain in the dumps." The ores have to be hauled 225 miles by cart. (B. L. Millerand J. T. Singewald, Jr.; The Mineral Deposits of South America, New York, 1919, p. 253.)
