Part 4 (1/2)

His work soon took him back to Australia, the land of his first notable success, but this time into South Australia instead of West Australia

Here he took personal charge of a large constructive undertaking in connection with the rehabilitation of the famous Broken Hill Mines

These mines were in the inhospitable wastes of the Great Stony Desert, four or five hundredconditions in the desert were a little worse than awful, but by his technical and organizing ability he brought to life the two or three abandoned mines which constituted the Broken Hills properties, and, adding to theroup froreat but unrealized possibilities into one of highly profitable actualities An iination and successful develop the zinc from ores that had already been treated for the other metals and then cast aside as worthless residues There were fourteen million tons of these residues on the Broken Hills due returns for the coanized to purchase the property

He also introduced newof the low-grade sulphide ores that constituted most of the mineral body of the mines Indeed, this work in South Australia didbeen one of his cardinal beliefs, na of large bodies of low-grade ores When such great ore-bodies are given the benefit of proper ent building up of exterior plants,leaves the realms of speculation and becomes a certain and stable business operation

All this successful work in South Australia occupied but seven athered about hiineers, mostly Americans There were thirty-five or forty of theer to attach the with hi nuanization and rehabilitation ofdirector or chief consulting engineer of a score ofcompanies, and the siave investors and other engineers a perfect confidence in its success and its honest handling

Two of his largest undertakings were in Russia, one at Kyshtim, in the Urals, the other at Irtish on the Siberian plains near Manchuria The Kyshtireat but run-down historic establishium One hundred and seventy thousand people lived on the estate, all dependent on theestablishment for their support The ores were of iron and copper, but the mines were so far from anywhere that not only did these ores have to be smelted at the mine mouths, but factories had to be erected to manufacture the metal into products capable of compact transportation When Hoover took over the bankrupt properties he found hi problems to solve, but as practically a relief problem to face For the underpaid workreatand rehabilitating the reat establish a suffering laboring population of helpless Russians

The Irtish properties were near the Manchurian border, a thousand miles up the Irtish River from Omsk, a mere remote bleak spot on the wild, bare Siberian steppes But at this spot lay extensive deposits of zinc, iron, lead, copper and coal, all together He had first of all to build 350 miles of railroad to ” operations included everything fro all sorts of things from metal door-knobs to steel rails and even stealish, Canadian and A reat establish basis when the war broke out It is all now in the hands of the Bolsheviki, with a most dubious outlook for the recovery of any of the e operations under his direction were in Colorado, Mexico, Korea, the Malay Straits Settlement, South Africa, and India (Bur has been, in its outcoreatest victory in reatest silver-leadas a mine could be and yet be called a mine It took him and his associates five years to transforle into the foremost producer of its kind in all the world This mine is far away in the north of Burhty es ofin itself, and then to create and organize at the end of this line everything pertaining to a greatplant Thirty thousand ether Hoover and his associates had in their es under way in 1914, about 175,000handled by them orth as much as the total annual output of all the mines in California And practically all of these successful mines had been made out of unsuccessful ones For Hoover really developed a new profession in connection with oodconcerns solvent, not by e but by work in the earth, in the mills, in the mine offices He works with materials, not pieces of paper It takes hi a dead mine to life; the mine must have mineral in it, to be sure, to start with, but he does all the rest That little , you ain The history ofis more a history of howot out of them, than of how such mines have succeeded A successful round with mineral at its botto for anization, system, skill, brains, all-around hureat miner because he is--I say it bluntly and not froreat reatly; he can do other things greatly Well, he can, and he has done theins when the World War began, when the world saith areater amazement an unknown miner, that is, unknown except to other reat men can do But ho kno the story of the boy and the man of the years before the war are not so much amazed We know that he is the kind of man, who had had the kind of experience, the kind of world education, ith opportunity can do things the world calls great and be the great ust, 1914, the tian a new chapter in his work because the world had begun a new epoch in its history, let us have a glimpse of this man outside of his mines and his offices Let us see him in his home, with his family, with his books if he has any, and with his friends of whom he has many

His two children, Herbert and Allan, were born in 1903 and 1907 respectively Living first in aparts needed more room, or perhaps, better, different kind of roorow up in Western American fashi+on, as far as this could be compassed in London And so they found, farther west, in a short street just off Kensington High Street and close to Kensington Gardens, a roorass and flower-beds It had been built long before by somebody who liked room, and then rebuilt, or at least made over and added to, by Montin Conway, the Alpinist and author For generations it had been called ”The Red House,” a na yearsto, or passing through London, for it beca

I knew it first in 1912 when I was doing some work in the British Museum Library The bedroom to which my wife and I were shoas inhabited already by a happy and very vocal fareen parrakeets, a part of the boys' e fro roo in and out of a cote, and hens sole silver Persian cat, and a sularly attended breakfasts, and Rags irregularly attended everything The cats were Mr

Hoover's favorites He liked to have one on his lap as he talked

There were bookshelves in all of the roouests had been, or long the evening, never went up to bed without a book in his hand I ca habit had becoian relief years e had frequently to cross the perilous North Sea together on our way from Thames-mouth to Holland or back in one of the little Dutch boats which used to run across twice a week untilmines, Hoover used always to fix an electric pocket lae of his bunk and read for a while after turning in He has had little ti in dayti that explains it

The shelves in ”The Red House” contained y But they contained many others as well

Especially were they burdened with books on econohter loads of stories Sherlock Holmes was there _in extenso_ The books on civics and economics and theories of finance ell thuhly penciled notes I should say they had been studied A frequent evening visitor, who cauests at dinner, was a well-known brilliant student of finance and econolish financial weekly and now editor of a very liberal, not to say radical, weekly of his own He and Hoover held long disquisition together, each having clear-cut ideas of his own and glad to try theist, whose little knowledge was more of the domestic economy of the four and six-footed inhabitants of earth than of the social science and politics of the bipedal lords of creation, h he likes books and even likes writing, Hoover makes no claims to authorshi+p hi of his knowledge, based on firsthand experience of the funda anization, into a book which, under the title of _Principles of Mining_, has been a well-known text for students ofsince its appearance in 1909 The book is a condensation of a course of lectures given by the author partly in Stanford and partly in Coluh it contains an unusual ainally treated for the kind of book it professes to be, na practice, the author's preface is a raphs simply demands quotation:

”The bulk of the e of the profession, and if any may think there is insufficient reference to previous writers, let hiin of our rown by small contributions of experience since, or before, those unnae of ht hundred years ago If I have contributed one sentence to the accuineers or have thrown one new ray of light on the work, I shall have done my share”

In the latter chapters of the book Hoover, having devoted the earlier chapters to technical methods, treats of the ad The last chapter is devoted to the ”character, training, and obligations of theprofession” in which he sets up a standard of professional ethics for the engineer of the very highest degree and reveals clearly his own genuinely philanthropic attitude toward his fellowad treat contract work and bonus systems he says:

”There is another phase of the labor question which eneral relations of erown, so likewise have the labor unions In general, they are noranization

”Labor unions usually pass through two phases First, the inertia of the unorganized labor is too often stirred only by deencies, the lack of balance in the leaders often makes for injustice in dereeoes on, hts of their ehts in ultimate benefit to labor itself Then the uard both interests When this stage arrives, violence disappears in favor of negotiation on econoains Given a union with leaders who can control the members, and who are disposed to approach differences in a business spirit, there are few sounder positions for the ereements honorably carried out dismiss the constant harassments of possible strikes Such unions exist in dozens of trades in this country, and they are entitled to greater recognition The tihshod over his labor is disappearing with the doctrine of _laissez faire_ on which it was founded The sooner the fact is recognized, the better for the employer The sooner soe, the eneral respect and influence

”The crying need of labor unions, and of some employers as well, is education on a fundaarded by all classes and especially by the acadees are the result of supply and denize that in these days of international flow of labor, coes is efficiency, then such an educational can may become possible

Then will the eround on which each can benefit There lives no engineer who has not seen insensate dispute as to wages where the real difficulty was inefficiency No ades a division with hisfroes the wage level demanded by labor unions whose policy is decreased efficiency in the false belief that they are providing forthe _Principles of Mining_ Hoover had collaborated with a a group of authors in the production of a book called _Econo_ And three years later, that is in 1912, he privately published, in sumptuous form, with scrupulously exact reproduction of all of its ricola's ”De Re Metallica,” the first great treatise on inally published in Latin in 1556, only one hundred years after Gutenberg had printed his first book ”De Re Metallica” was the standard ricola, the author, was really one Georg Bauer, a Ger the custom of his time used for pen-name the literal Latin equivalents of the words of his German name

This translation, with its copious added notes of editorial commentary, was the joint work of Hoover and his wife--it was Mrs Hoover, indeed, who began it--and occupied s--and soh nearly five years

They had been for so in old books on China and the Far East and ancient treatises on early ical processes, and had accu the old bookshops of the world in their quest In 1902, Mrs

Hoover while looking up soricola, which she had forgotten since the days she was in Dr Branner's laboratory By invoking the services of one of their friends a the old book dealers the Hoovers soon owned a copy