r the employment
of their money at over 4%.

Unfortunately for the reputation of the mining industry, and metal
mines especially, the business is often not conducted or valued on
lines which have been outlined in these chapters. There is often
the desire to sell stocks beyond their value. There is always the
possibility that extension in depth will reveal a glorious Eldorado.
It occasionally does, and the report echoes round the world for years,
together with tributes to the great judgment of the exploiters. The
volume of sound allures undue numbers of the venturesome, untrained,
and ill-advised public to the business, together with a mob of
camp-followers whose objective is to exploit the ignorant by preying
on their gambling instincts. Thus a considerable section of metal
mining industry is in the hands of these classes, and a cloud of
disrepute hangs ever in the horizon.

There has been a great educational campaign in progress during the
past few years through the technical training of men for conduct
of the industry, by the example of reputable companies in regularly
publishing the essential facts upon which the value of their mines
is based, and through understandable nontechnical discussion in
and by some sections of the financial and general press. The real
investor is being educated to distinguish between reputable concerns
and the counters of gamesters. Moreover, yearly, men of technical
knowledge are taking a stronger and more influential part in mining
finance and in the direction of mining and exploration companies.
The net result of these forces will be to put mining on a better
plane.

CHAPTER XX.

The Character, Training, and Obligations of the Mining Engineering
Profession.

In a discussion of some problems of metal mining from the point
of view of the direction of mining operations it may not be amiss
to discuss the character of the mining engineering profession in
its bearings on training and practice, and its relations to the
public.

The most dominant characteristic of the mining engineering profession
is the vast preponderance of the commercial over the technical in
the daily work of the engineer. For years a gradual evolution has
been in progress altering the larger demands on this branch of the
engineering profession from advisory to executive work. The mining
engineer is no longer the technician who concocts reports and blue
prints. It is demanded of him that he devise the finance