housand people lived on the estate, all dependent on the
mining establishment 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
himself not only with mining and manufacturing problems to solve, but
with what was practically a relief problem to face. For the underpaid
workmen and their unfortunate families were in a state of great misery.
He succeeded not only in modernizing and rehabilitating the material
part of the great establishment, but at the same time in rescuing and
revivifying 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 make the spot at all accessible. And the actual
"mining" operations included everything from digging out and smelting
the ores to manufacturing all sorts of things from metal door-knobs to
steel rails and even steamboats to ply on the Irtish River. He put a
large sum of English, Canadian and American money--including much of his
own--into the work of building up a great establishment which was just
on a paying 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 money put into it.

Other large operations under his direction were in Colorado, Mexico,
Korea, the Malay Straits Settlement, South Africa, and India (Burma).
The Burma undertaking has been, in its outcome at least, and, indeed, in
many other respects, Hoover's greatest victory in mining engineering and
organization. It is today the greatest silver-lead mine in the world,
although it started from as near to nothing as a mine could be and yet
be called a mine. It took him and his associates five years to
transform some deserted works in the heart of a jungle into the foremost
producer of its kind in all the world. This mine is far away in the
north of Burma, almost on the Chinese border. They had first to build
eighty miles of railroad through the jungle and over two ranges of