Excerpt from Statistics and Technology of the Precious Metals: Prepared Under the Direction of Clarence King, Special Agent

As regards the best method for conducting such an investigation, the experience gained in this study would seem to teach that, while that employed here would produce the most perfect results under very favorable conditions, these conditions might demand an impracticably large expenditure of time and money. They would require a larger corps of experts, who should be specialists and receive adequate salaries, and be employed for a long enough time to become thoroughly familiar with their work before, the investigation was undertaken. This could be best accomplished by making the investigation a permanent one. The results to be obtained by simple untrained enumerators, or from circulars sent without means of checking the results obtained, by technical men, will necessarily prove so unreliable in mining industry as to be of little value. Should the intermittent or decennial method still prevail, a compromise between the two could be advantageously made by having untrained men go over the country rapidly and collect a few main figures for the statistical tables; and a smaller corps of thoroughly trained specialists make investigation of a few typical mines or reduction works in the various branches of the industry.

Comparative summary OF results - One of the most instructive results of an investigation like the present should be the opportunity it would offer for a comparative study of the industry as a whole and in its individual branches, as compared with the conditions which prevail in other countries, especially the older mining regions of Europe, and as compared with those which prevailed in this country ten years before, and of the changes and improvements which have been accomplished during the preceding decade. As a natural sequence of such a study suggestions would arise as to where improvements could he introduced or greater economy practiced in the future, and the direction in which increase or decrease of production over the present might be looked for.

Unfortunately statistical data for such a comparison are wanting. The census for 1870 gave practically no data at all with regard to our mining industry, and the publications of the Commissioner of Mineral Statistics ceased after 1875.

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