“Legitimate Mining.”

Some one has favored us with a copy of a very handsome paper called “The Conservative.” The principal tiling that it desires to “conserve” appears to be “legitimate mining.” We are by no means experts in mining, but, in our view, legitimate mining consists simply in digging minerals out of the earth and stilling them to those who desire them for products embodying an amount of labor equal to that which the minerals have cost the miner. If any such business as this is going on in any part of the world, and “The Conservative” is trying to “conserve” it, it is engaged in a very commendable work, in which we join, heart and hand.

But what is generally known as “legitimate mining” consists, as far as we have observed, in staking off a large tract of land in some abandoned region which nobody by any chance ever visits, paying some alleged mining expert to examine its contents and lie about them in terms sufficiently technical to hide the lie from the unlearned, vesting the ownership of the land in a stock company, electing the original holders as the officers, selling shares at prices corresponding in enormity to the lies that induce people to buy them, using most of the money thus received to pay princely salaries to the aforesaid officials, spending the balance in digging a mine, causing some “accident” to befall it, telling more lies about the wonderful results that the “accident” has prevented, assessing the stockholders to repair damages and keep up the salaries, selling the little mineral that may be brought to the surface at the highest possible prices regardless of the labor-cost, repeating these operations until they are no longer endurable and all the fools have been fleeced, and, finally, going into bankruptcy, and, perhaps, “skipping out” with the remaining funds. There is a plenty of such business as this going on in many parts of the world; but, if “The Conservative” is trying to “conserve” it, it is engaged in a very damnable work, which we fight, tooth and nail. Liberty’s attitude toward these and all other swindles is not at all conservative, but very radical. She would destroy them, root and branch. And their roots are land monopoly and money monopoly.