We have seen, and unfortunately shall see, many a promising mining company brought to grief by this popular error.  The directors of mining companies might, to use an American saying, “paste this in their hats” as a useful and safe aphorism.  “LET OTHERS DO THE EXPERIMENTING; WE ARE WILLING TO PAY ONLY FOR PROVED IMPROVEMENTS.”  I can cordially endorse every word of the following extracts from Messrs. McDermott and Duffield’s admirable little work, “Losses in Gold Amalgamation.”

“Some directors of mining companies are naturally inclined to listen to the specious promises of inventors of novel processes and new machinery, forgetting their own personal disadvantage in any argument on such matters, and assuming a confidence in the logic of their own conclusions, while they ignore the fruitful experience of thousands of practical men who are engaged in the mining business.  The repeated failures of directors in sending out new machinery to their mines ought by this time to be a sufficient warning against increasing risks that are at once natural and unavoidable, and to deter them from plunging their shareholders into experiments which, in ninety-nine cases out of a hundred, result in nothing but excessive and needless expenses.

“It is certain that new machines and new processes are, and will be, given attention by mining men in proportion to their probable merits; but the proper place for experiments is in a mill already as successful as under known processes it can be made.  In a new enterprise, even when the expense of an experiment is undertaken by the inventor, the loss to the mine-owner in case of failure must be very great, both in time and general running expenses.  Directors should not believe that a willingness to risk cash in proving an invention is necessarily any proof of value of the same; it is only a measure of the faith of the inventor, which is hardly a safe standard to risk shareholders’ money by.

“The variety of modifications in approved processes ought at least to suggest the desirability of exhausting the known, before drawing on the unknown and purely speculative.  It should also be borne in mind that what might appear at first sight to be new processes, and even new machinery, are, in fact, often nothing but old contrivances and plausible theories long ago exploded among practical men.

“Many mining companies have been ruined, without any reference to their mines, through men deciding on the reasonableness of new process and machinery who have no knowledge of the business in hand.  It is assumed often, that if an inventor or manufacturer of new machinery will agree to guarantee success, or take no pay if not successful, the company takes no risk.  In actual fact a whole year is wasted in most cases, failure spoils the reputation of the company, running expenses have continued, and further working capital cannot be raised, because all concerned have lost confidence by the failure to obtain returns