November 15, 2011

Nevada's Online State News Journal

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Nevada History:

 [How San Francisco's Trade is Destroyed, Sacramento Union, July 23, 1870]

HOW SAN FRANCISCO'S TRADE IS DESTROYED.

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            The Union has often drawn attention to the various ways by which the business men of San Francisco manage to destroy the trade of that city and to injure the State at large thereby.  A case in point is mentioned by the White Pine News. The State of Nevada has many mines of  silver in which base metal is so mixed with the precious that, the ore must be treated by chemical works that can only be supplied in large cities. Hitherto it appears the miners of White Pine have found a better paying market for this class of ore in Newark than San Francisco, though the distance to Newark is six times as great as to San Francisco. The News explains this curious fact in a way as discreditable to the business men of the Bay as to the Central Pacific Railway Company ; and here is the explanation : A lot of fourteen tons of ore mined in Treasure Hill was shipped by the owners to the care of E. M. Arthur, of the house of Wells, Fargo & Co., San Francisco. The freight charges from Hamilton were $38 per ton. The miners had to pay $8 per ton for crushing and sampling the ore, before the agent below would have anything to do with it. This made the cost per ton, delivered, $46. When crushed an assay from the entire lot gave an average valuation of $121 90 in silver; forty-one per cent, lead, and nine per cent. copper per ton. At Newark the chemical reducing works allow 5 3/4 cents per pound for the lead, and the market value for the copper, which we are not now able to state. The lead per ton of this Treasure Hill ore would have been, at forty-one per cent., 820 pounds, which, at 5 3/4 cents per pound, would make $47 15. Add this to the $124 96 of silver, and we have $172 11 as the value of a ton of the ore at Newark, according to its assay, allowing nothing for the nine per cent. of copper. Now let us see what were the San Francisco returns to the White Pine miners. The News says :

            "Arthur writes to the party shipping the ore that he has sold it for $80 the ton, standing a reduction of one per cent, of weight for moisture. The consignee writes that he did all he could to get the best price for the ore, in pulp; took memorandum of the assay to every purchaser in the city, and $80 was the best he could get. The most damaging feature of the report, however, was that San Francisco dealers would make no allowance at all for copper nor lead, and the price paid was only 64 per cent. of the assay value of the silver. These are naked facts. We will not stop here to discuss them, nor to draw comparisons between the figures of Newark purchasers and those of San Francisco. Arthur is a well-informed gentleman, has been for years in the banking department of Wells, Fargo & Co., and is situated to procure the best possible terms on a bullion or ore transaction. The conclusion here is, that San Francisco is cursed with a ring to depress the base bullion interest for the benefit of jobbers. These are the reasons why ores and bullion are going from White Pine to Newark."

            This business of extracting the base metals from ores of precious metals is rapidly enlarging in the country, and will by and by become immense, as it is found that many of the best mines furnish ores of this class. Chicago is about to go into it extensively ; and Chicago will secure all the ores and of course most of the wealth of Nevada derived from such mines unless San Francisco offers much better inducements than she now does.