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About Omaha daily bee. (Omaha [Neb.]) 187?-1922 | View Entire Issue (Aug. 30, 1914)
'Jiih U.MAtt.X Ml. Ml. I.; vt.wioi ... . i. i . Fortunes Made in Andean Tin leal kin nones? 5 (Copyright, 1914, by Prank O. Carpenter.) ORVRO. Bollvla.-Tln Is now king In Bolivia. This country onc produced one-third of all thu silver mined In the world. It la now turnlnc out more than nne-fourth of all the tin. and It has such vast deposits of that mineral that It will some day drive the mines of Malaysia and Cornwall out of existence. Tin Is found almost everywhere In the western chain of the Andes. It Is mined on the high slopes about Lake Tltlcaca. and there are great tin deposits In the msln ranees of the Cordillera Real and Its numerous spurs. Right here In the heart of the Bolivian plateau, eight hours' ride by train from I,a Pai, Is a tin mine, out of wlilch they have been taking ore for generations. The mine has a tunnel that starts Into It out of the very heart of the city, and one has to walk through this leas than half a mile before he comes to the workings. These have been ex tended to a depth of 700 feet with solid tin all the way. No one knows how far down the ore goes. The mine waa worked by the Spaniards for silver, but later on changed from silver to tin and the bulk of the product is now In that metal. The tin ore Ilea in veins between layers of rock. It la the meat of a mighty stone sandwich that has to be blasted out and tarried to the surface. There the great chunks of tin and rock are broken to pieces and sorted over by Indian women, who pick out all the ore that will pay to be sent away for reduction. During my stay here I visited this mine, liack of the buildings containing the ma chinery of Its main works are mounds of broken stone and piles of valuable ore. The mounds look like gravel. They are tho waste of the mine, having only about 1 per cent of the metal. The good ore looks like that of silver or lead. It Is so dull in color that no one would Imagine that It could produce the shine one finds on a new dishpan or wash boiler. Ore Comes la Chanka. I spent some time watching the Indian women at work. The ore comes out In chunks, some of which are ten times as big ss your head. The women break the chunks Into piece with heavy steel hammers and pick out the bits that con tain tin and silver. They have faces the color of copper, and as they alt on the ground pounding away their black bare feet and rosy bare calves can be seen showing out from under their very full skirts. They are dirty and frowsy and their hair and bodiea form the homes of unmentionable Insects. They are muscu lar. Their continual pounding gives them large arms and they are noted for the size of their biceps. They keep at the Job from daylight to dark, and their earnings are about 50 cents of our money. They re paid by the amount that they do, and It was with difficulty that I got them to stop work and pose for my pic ture. Nearly all of these girls were chewing coca and their cheeks were swelled out by the fat quids inside them. While I waited some of the miners came out and I Photographed them. I asked as to wages and they told me they were paid about 60 cents for ten or eleven hours' work un derground. Tho men are brought up In the mines and are skilled In the handling of ore. The mining company that owns this mountain of minerals has three different properties, all of Which are producing sil ver and tin. It has hundreds of miners and keeps 250 women at work. The Oruro mines have always paid well, and today they are producing good dividends. I vis ited them when I was here some years ago, and before the railroad to La Pax had yet been constructed. The fuel then used was the llama manure, brought In I by caravans from all over the country. It took four tons of thst stuff to run the forty-horsepower engine twenty-four hours, and I remember going with one of the managers of the mine into the pit where the fuel was stored. It then con tained 150.000 pounds of llama droppings. The stuff looked like gray bullets or gravel, and it was aa dry as a bone and gave forth no smell. 23 Ssv3S Typical ktn tnxnev " w ,, . I , W . : ... ! '4 ;VA "j,''kit S J? i VS v I Coal Fifty Dollars Per Toa. Todsy the company Is using cosl st a cost of about $50 a ton It has installed the most modern machinery, and i( Is saving money by employing anthracite every twelve hours.) The t'neia mines are the property of Simon I. Patino, who might be called the tin king of the world. He is worth many millions, and It all cornea from tin. Front Poverty to Riches. It Is only a few years ago that Patino waa a poor clerk, working for a few dol lais a month. He had' Indian blood in his veins, and no one supposed he would ever be more than a hireling. Then he found this prospect and tried to get his employers to work it. They had no faith In him or his property, and so he de nounced the claim for hlmnelf. In some way he managed to get a amall capital. At first he practically lived In the mine, laboring there with the few Indians he could hire at low wages. He finally struck a rich vein and since then the mine has paid as high as $5,000,000 a year. It some times yields as much as $200,000 a month. Patino has suddenly jumped from pov erty to extravagant riches and he has hard work to Invest the surplus. He is Interested In banks and he has bought houses and haciendas and mines of va rious kinds. He has built a railroad from the Antofagasta line to Uncla to get his ore out -to the steamers; and is Installing the best machinery. Of late years he has been living in Paris and his properties are now managed by agents. I have al ready referred to the great blocks of tin from the Patino mines that will be shown at the world's fair at San Francisco. Another Tin Romance. I hesr other romances of tin fortunes msde on these Bolivian highlands. One relates to a German mechanic named Kemp, who opened a mine when tin waa selling for $1,100 a ton. He had no trouble In disposing of the property to a Chilean syndicate, which paid him $100,000 in cash and an equal amount in the shares of tho mines, which were then estimated at par. Kemp had no knowledge of the Value of money, and he supposed that his $100, 000 would last him forever. He took it and went off to Europe. He spent right and left and within less than two years nis xonune was gone, lie then came back to Chile, expecting to get another $100,000 by the sale of his stock. In the (meantime the price of tin had fallen, and the shares that Kemp took at par were each worth 1 centa instesd of $5. He thought he had been tricked and threat ened the company with a lawsuit. The officials replied that there was now no ?;aa engines thst give a 75 per cent fuel j money in mlnlrg and that he could have iin ient, using one pound and a hair of me property hark as a gift. He took It anthracite per hcuraepower per hour. This j nd for a time almost starved. He could saves a great deal In a region where the J not get enough food for his Indian labor- coal frciehts from the sea coast are from $ to $'!0 per ton I have already written of the mines of T'otom that were opened up by the Bnan iirds. Since their beginning they have produced three or four billion doliara' worth of silver, and It is now thought millions or dollars more were thrown nway In the tin which waa mixed with the silver. The people did not understand Ihe value of the baser metal. They could rot realize that It might some day be worth $1,100 a ton. which has been Its sell ing price within tho last year, although it is now very much less. So they took out the sliver and left the tin on the dumps, whence it haa been washed a may by the streams. All this is changed and the great profit la now In the tin. the Totcsl owners having originated a syndi cate to operate the property on a silver basis. They wilt work the mines almost solely for tin and will capitalise them largely en their fame In the psst aa sil ver producers Thene are other tin mines of enormous vslue In the Potosl district. I.a Kalva dora has produced is much as 1,'ftO.ino Pounds of pure tin In a month and the Vncla mines are now yielding more than a half million pounds of that mineral era. Then the price of tin rose and he was able to recapitalise the mine. He organized a new company and the shares sre now above par. Those which Kemp has, at their face value, are worth at least $125,000. I have already written of the Bolivian Exploitation and Development company, the president of which Is Mr. Horace, G. Knomles, our former minister to Bolivia. Mr. Knowlcs tells me that his prospectors have recently discovered a wonderful de posit of stream tin In one of the Bolivian rivers. The most of the tin now mined here is In quarts, but thla stream tin Is In nuggets and lumps from the aize of an egg to that of your two flata or larger. It la said to be very rich, containing 63 Ir cent of oxide of tin. The deposit runs through the bed of a river for a distance of twenty-six mllea Deposits Sea reel r Toarbed. Mr. Knowlea thinks that the tin of Bo livla has scarcely been touched; he says that his engineers are sending In reports of many finds that promise to pay big dividends upon their develoDment. Il believes that when our canal Is completed the tin ores of Bolivia will go to the United Etates rather than to Europe. -We are now using 0 or 50 per cent of all the tin mined, and the tin we get from Bo livia Is taken down to the seacoast In the ore and shipped off to England, whero It Is smelted and then carried across the Atlantlo to be used In our factories. Mr. Knowles thinks that the enormous can ning industry of California should estab lish Its own tin plate mills, and that tha tin ore should go north along the Pacific coast from the mines to the mills. At present It costs about $ii0 to ret tin from theae mines to Liverpool, and, of this. $15 covers the freight to the sea coast. The other $45 Is taken up In vari ous charges. Including $1.1 for carrying the ore from Antofagasta to Liverpool. The distance to S.tn Francisco, Is Angeles cr Puget sound Is very much less, and the great saving In the charges of the go-betweens mho handle the tin between Kngland and the I'nlted States would make a fine profit for the American fae tories. We are now using almost $50.000.. 000 worth of tin bars and Hocks every year. The export of Bolivia is worth much loss than this, and the T'nlted States could take all of Its product and sflll not have enough to satisfy Its de mands. In the meantime tin prospecting Is go ing on In many parts of this country, and the new railroads, now building, will open up highly mineralized territories that will probably increase the tin product. The, eld mines are being re-equipped with modern machinery, and many think that the future output will be such that It will drive the more expensive Mslaysisn tin out of tha market. At present they are using 1,500-pound stamps to crush the hand-sorted ore. which Is then run through screens of from six to sixteen meshes rer Inch. After thst the tin Is concentrated and shipped off to England, In the past the ore haa been taken out of tho earth In the most wasteful ways Much of It was carried out of the mines In buckets of rawhide, up ladders on tho backs of Indians. Thousands of tons of the richest ore were crushed between stones and then washed out In streams of rater by the Indian women. Much of this ore so treated carried from 40 to 50 per cent of metallic tin; the lower grades were rejected because they would not pay for the labor. Titles Are Xot erare. Before leaving the subject of Bolivian mining I would say that the future of the country depends largely upon the passage of the laws advocated by the president and congress. Just now tho protection of mining Investments In Bolivia Is not so good as In Peru. There Is a regular busi ness in the contesting of titles by the law yers, and In fighting for mines that other men own. I am told that there are many shyster lawyers and others who make a practice of laying claim to every mine supposed to be good and of contesting Its title as soon as It Is denounced. Said one of the leading railroad men of Bolivia to me yesterday: "I might go to the heart of the backwoods in the eastern part of this country and lay claim to a mine a hundred milea from where any white man ever trod. If I did so I venture that within two days after that mine was a matter of record there would bo a half dozen applications filed, disputing my title and swearing that the contestant had record proof that he owned it. Thla Is especially so of any mine, thought to be good, and that even long after the mine has been profitably worked. Not long ago the engineers of the largest American copper syndicate came to La Pax and spent six months looking over the ground. They found plenty of good prospects, but refused to Invest under the present iawa and went over the border to Chile, where they could be sure of their titles." Lawyers Mast Be Watched. "One has also to watch the papers that nis own lawyers prepare making hla claim," this man continued. "I know of one case In which a big proposition was almost lost by an error In tha descrip tion. The lawyer in giving the feet or meters from a certain point used the word "northeast" where he should have used the word "north." When the error was called to his attention he said it was a aiip of the pen, but had It been so r corded it would have resulted in vltlat Ing the title to a property worth hun areas or thousands of dollars. I have no doubt that that error waa intentional and that with a view to a lawsuit In the fu ture." Moreover, any large property taken up by a (ringo Is sure to have four or five contests riled against it by people who ih to embarrass the owner, and mho expect to be bought off before they will rrminuiBn ineir sun. 1 Know of a case In which a Bolivian, who haa been suc cessfully operating a mining property for years, w-nt to London and sold his mine to a British syndicate on the bssls that the title waa clear. When he returned he found that five different suits had been filed, claiming the mine, and It cost him $.W,000 to settle them." tiuch things are injurious to tha de velopment of Bolivia, but I hear of other cases even worse. I am told, for Instance. that tha notaries public sometimes issue papers to themselves for the samo prop ertlea concerning which they ara paid to get tltlea for others, and antedate their own rlaims. If tha mines turn out good, they can then claim prior titlea. Another method Is to leave some Important clause oui so as io lurnisn ground for a suit as to defect of title, and a third way is to forge false pspers snd claims. I know of many mines of value In Bolivia now In the handa of foreigners that are cost ing their owners much to defend them, and It certainly behooves all Americans coming here to Invest In mineral prop- Y the wife of the man who does no own his home To you, a house and lot means far more than a real estate investment. It means a home a place where you must spend the greater part of your life an influence which shapes the lives of your children and lends to your own comfort and happiness. How muck more pride you would take in caring for a house that was your very own! The furnishings, decorations, etc., would be of your own choosing, The little improvements that you could make from year to year to suit your own comfort and taste would add interest and zest to life, And then, the inevitable visit of the landlord around the first of the month, the steady drain on the family resources with nothing to show but a bundle of rent receipts, would be things of the past. Perhaps you don't know that you can actually buy a home by paying just about the same amount monthly tnat you would pay for rent You have got to pay out this money anyway and what a sat islactlon it "would' be after a few years to possess the title to the place you live in, rathci-than nothing. By this plan you would not only have a real home in every sense of the word, but the yearly increase in value of the property. Omaha real estate is a splen did investment and those people with foresight are taking advantage of the great opportunities now. Talk this over with your husband to day. Open the paper to the real estate adver tisements in the classified section and place them before him. Suggest to him that he owes it t(f you and to his children, if you have any to take this step, No doubt he has al ready given the matter a great deal of thought, but make your In' teres t a little plainer to him, THE OMAHA BEE Everybody Reads Bee Want Ads (Coutiued on Page Twelve.)