A HISTORY OF CORNWALL with rubbish meant extra expense in dressing, and caused considerable waste, as, when so much washing was necessary, the finer parts of the ore were liable to be carried off by the water. 1 The downward slope began to be abandoned towards the end of the eighteenth century 2 for the system which prevails at present, namely, that of driving levels and stoping upwards. As soon as a shaft is sunk to sufficient depths be- neath the adit, a level is commenced upon the lode, and carried both east and west. If the latter is rich at the commencement of the level as the workman goes forward, another is em- ployed to dig down the ore above the level, and, as he makes progress, a third follows him in another stope, and so they proceed, until the intermediate part of the lode (or as much of it as is productive of ore) is wholly removed. 3 Meanwhile the shaft becomes deep enough for several other levels long before the ore above the first is exhausted. If the lode is poor in the first level nothing more is done. If it becomes productive in some parts at a distance from the shaft, there the miners begin to stope. The advantages of this system are several. In the first place it is easy to find what part of the lode is rich and what barren, and the miners have it in their power to take away the valuable parts and leave the worthless. Even the latter are useful, as they serve the purpose of timber in keeping the mines open. Every part of the works is better drained. The ore, by being taken from the lode when comparatively dry, is more easily kept separate from the worthless ground, and is therefore subject to little waste and costs much less to dress. The riches of the lode may be extracted more speedily, and the produce is far less fluctuating. The ability exists also to make greater efforts for the dis- covery of new bunches of ore in other parts of the lode, and, as a general consequence, the mine is not only more profitable but much more permanent. 4 I have left until the last the history of the internal organization of the mines and of the classes who operated them. To trace through a thousand years the development of the tin works from shallow pits owned and worked by groups of labourers to the vast companies of to- day which employ in their works thousands of hired labourers, is a task which calls for great discrimination, and which, perhaps, may be best accomplished by a reversal of the usual order of 1 ' Improvements in Mining,' by Jos. Carne, Trans. Roy. Geol. Soc. Cornto. iii, 6970. 3 Worth, Historical Notes concerning the Progress of Mining Skill, 14. 3 ' Improvements in Mining,' by Jos. Carne, Trans. Roy. Geol. Soc. Cornw. iii, 70. 4 Ibid. 70, 71. Hunt, British Mining, 602 et seq. procedure, and an exposition first of the present and then of the past. The mines to-day are run either as corpora- tions, 5 or, by virtue of local mining law, as cost- book companies. 6 The latter form is the older of the two. Under the cost-book system two or three men secure a lease of a property 7 and in- duce some others to join them ; if the property seems promising, these few would include a banker, a smelter } an iron, timber, candle, and cordage merchant, and possibly a dealer in new and second-hand machinery. They then register, under the cost-book, a company of, say, 512 shares, and are ready to begin business. They hold a meeting, elect a purser to manage the accounts, and call up, say, 1 per share. At the next meeting perhaps a call of i or more is made, and so matters continue until one of three things happens : the mine becomes self-support- ing ; it earns profits, in which case there is a division ; there comes a call to which the chief adventurer refuses to respond, in which case if the others refuse, or are unable, to take up the defaulter's shares, the mine closes. If the pro- ceeds from the sale of lease and machinery are insufficient to liquidate the mine's liabilities, then the adventurers are called upon to contribute pro rata ; and as long as a single moneyed man remains among them the creditors are sure of recovering. Such is the system as it was in the days when Cornish tin mining was at its height. With the advent of modern speculative enter- prise the number of shareholders has increased 8 in most cost-book concerns, and 'out-adventurers' 9 have entered that is, partners not residing in the district. A new system has now become engrafted upon the old, and the general body of adventurers usually delegate their powers to a managing committee, 10 consisting as a rule of the largest resident shareholders. In spite of these changes, however, the under- taking has remained quite unlike the usual cor- poration or partnership, and its main features still hold true. These are : first, absence of fixed capital ; secondly, the right to transfer shares by giving written notice to the purser, 11 and without the consent of one's partners ; thirdly, the right of any adventurer to relinquish his interest upon 5 James, Pseudo-Cost-Book Companies, 22. 6 The Companies Act of 1 862 brought the limited liability system into the stannaries. Before that, all the mines were cost-book concerns (Rep. on Stannary Act Amend. Bill (1887), Q. 119). 7 Cornish Mining, 1 1 ; Bartlett, Treatise on British Mining, 24. 8 Cost-book companies are now so extensive that meetings are usually held, not monthly, but at in- tervals of sixteen weeks, so as to allow distant share- holders to attend (Rep. on Stannary Act Amend. Bill (1887), Q. 17). 9 James, Pseudo-Cost-Book Companies, 3 1 . 10 Watson, Compendium of Brit. Mining, i . 11 Pike, Britain's Metal Mines, 52. 554
