Miners & Metallurgists

Best U. S. operator of a blast furnace is a graduate of correspondence and night schools, Ora E. Clark of Hamilton, Ohio. The American Institute of Mining & Metallurgical Engineers marked him so at their annual meeting in Manhattan last week. With International Correspondence School instruction Ora E. Clark was, at 19, chief chemist for a small Pennsylvania blast furnace. At 35 and with several years of night schooling he is chief chemist, foreman and blast furnace superintendent of the Hamilton Coke & Iron Co. When the Hamilton furnaces operate (they have been cold since November), he runs them at remarkable efficiency. The thing iron-masters chiefly appreciate in his work is the instruction he gives them about coke. There is a best shape and condition of coke for melting iron from ores. Furnaceman Clark has determined the conditions.

At the Institute ceremonies he unintentionally attained another distinction. In a ball room of evening clothes his was the only business suit, the only soft white shirt. The tuxedoes applauded him heartily, none more so than President Frederick Worthen Bradley of Alaska Juneau Mining Co., who also won a miner's & metallurgist's award.

President Bradley mines gold so efficiently that he earns dividends for Alaska Juneau investors fron dirt which contains only 90-c- worth of gold to a ton.

Other men honored at last week's meeting: Professor Champion Herbert Mathewson of Yale, for "his scientific contributions to the art of working and annealing nonferrous metals"; Professor Corbin T. Eddy of Michigan College of Mining & Technology for being a promising young scientist (TIME, Oct. 26) ; Howard Scott of Westinghouse Co. for his development of special alloys.

Between the honorifications and the unveiling of a three-quarter length portrait of President Hoover, the American Institute of Mining & Metallurgical Engineers heard:

Greatest known stores of gold lie in Canada, southern Rhodesia, Siberia and western Australia.

No new gold strikes are expected like those which occurred in California, the Klondike, the Rand, Australia and Lena gold fields.

Last year the U. S. produced 2,365,881 fine ounces of gold worth $48,907,100.76. The 1930 production 2,128.027 oz. World production in 1930 was 20,460,168 oz. Mining engineers like President Hoover, who before his eleemosynary World War work was one of the world's most successful, estimate that world gold production will increase slowly until 1935, then will slowly decline. Economists, however, know that when real need develops, more Bradleys will appear to work marginal gold deposits (FORTUNE, February 1931).

Copper-nickel alloys, said Dr. Paul Dyer Merica of International Nickel Co., are now prepared by heat treatment to stand a pull of 175,000 Ib. per sq. in., a tensile trength comparable to that of heat-treated steel.

"Most important mineral discovery in many years," noted Hugh S. Spence of the Canadian Department of Mines, are two veins of pitchblende at Great Bear Lake, Canada. One gram of radium, worth about $70,000, is produced from six and a half to 13 tons of pitchblende. Canada expects to break the Belgium monopoly of African radium as soon as railroads and highways can be built to Great Bear Lake.

Silver in the same region is yielding 9,000 oz., worth about $3,000 at present low prices, to a ton of ore. Some miners have found ore rich enough to carry to the smelters by airplane.

Magnesium metal at 30-c- per Ib. is supplanting aluminum and iron in sufficient quantities to make dividends for Dow Chemical Co., big reducers.

Professor Fred Allison of Alabama Polytechnic Institute, presumptive discoverer of "alabamine and virginium" (TIME, Feb. 15), appeared to argue the validity of his magneto-optical system of discerning substances.

R. S. Dean & John Gross of the U. S. Bureau of Mines soak low grade ores in water, heat the wet rocks to 212DEG F. (water's boiling point). The steam shatters the ores, releases sufficient materials to make the mining worth while.

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