(Unlike some other reproductions of classic texts (1) We h...)
Unlike some other reproductions of classic texts (1) We have not used OCR(Optical Character Recognition), as this leads to bad quality books with introduced typos. (2) In books where there are images such as portraits, maps, sketches etc We have endeavoured to keep the quality of these images, so they represent accurately the original artefact. Although occasionally there may be certain imperfections with these old texts, we feel they deserve to be made available for future generations to enjoy.
(Excerpt from A Woman's Part in a Revolution
My husband h...)
Excerpt from A Woman's Part in a Revolution
My husband had vast interests in his charge, many million pounds sterling had been invested at his instance in the mining industry of the country, and actuated by a sense of duty and responsibility to those who had confided in him, he felt in honour bound to take an active part in the movement, for the protection and preservation of the prop erty placed under his control.
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Great American Issues: Political Social Economic, (a Constructive Study) (Classic Reprint)
(Excerpt from Great American Issues: Political Social Econ...)
Excerpt from Great American Issues: Political Social Economic, (a Constructive Study)
Scope of the term Standard of Living - Influence of American industrialism on the Standard of Living - Aspects of the improved Standard of Living Education as a factor in advancing the Standard of Living - Activity versus frugality as the basis of American prosperity - Importance of thrift - Classes most affected by the increased cost of living - Relative changes in the incomes of salaried employees and wage earners since the beginning of the war - Importance of maintaining and improving the Standard of Living - Relation of rising prices to social unrest-effect of rising prices - A survey of wages-difference between real and nominal w s - Professor Fisher's plan for stabilizing the purc sing power of the dollar Desirability of stable relations between prices and wages - Fundamental importance of the individual in adjusting the Standard of Living - The plea for an adequate wage - Minimum wage legislation - Need for further trial of legislation providing an adequate wage in American industries.
About the Publisher
Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com
This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.
(Excerpt from The Engineer
If we eliminate any one of the...)
Excerpt from The Engineer
If we eliminate any one of the engineering elements which underlie our present civiliza tion, the entire structure collapses. Let us suppose, for instance, that the mining - Engi neer is suddenly removed. The most imme diate effect would be the lack of fuel for our manufacture and commerce. Machinery could no longer be made, because there would be no metal. The use of electricity would cease, because there would be no copper. Education which depends on print ing, literature, the arts, all the luxuries and conveniences and most of the necessities of life would come abruptly to an end, and we should be plunged immediately into the darkness of the stone age.
About the Publisher
Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com
This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.
John Hays Hammond was an American mining engineer, diplomat, and philanthropist. He was an early advocate of deep mining, and helped develop gold mining in South Africa and California.
Background
John Hays Hammond was born on March 31, 1855 in San Francisco, California, United States. His father, Richard Pindell Hammond, an army officer, came to that city in 1849 on garrison duty. He resigned from the army two years later to become a surveyor and engineer and soon entered political life, serving as speaker of the California legislature in 1852 and later as chairman of the San Francisco board of police commissioners. In 1854 he married Mrs. Sarah Elizabeth (Hays) Lea, the widowed sister of a fellow officer in the Mexican War, John Coffee Hays, after whom young Hammond was named.
The oldest of their seven children, he had one older half-sister. Both his parents were of southern birth. His mother came of a prominent Tennessee family; the Hammonds had lived in Maryland since colonial days. Both sides of the family may have contributed to Hammond's adventurous bent.
His grandfather, Doctor William Hammond, an army surgeon, and two of his uncles had, like his father, served in the Mexican War; and during his formative years the boy was very close to his "Uncle Jack" Hays, who regaled him with stories of Indian fighting and took him on camping trips sometimes lasting for several weeks. At fifteen he had traveled over a good portion of California and nearby Nevada.
Another early influence was the wide and important circle of his father's friends, including the leading generals of the Civil War, the elder Hammond's contemporaries at West Point and in the war with Mexico. Hammond's own gift for friendship later made him an intimate of leading men in many fields, but with his family position he was well launched.
Education
After attending local public and private schools, Hammond was sent east to the Hopkins Grammar School at New Haven to prepare for Yale. He entered Yale's Sheffield Scientific School in 1873 and graduated three years later with a Bachelor of Philosophy degree and a good record in athletics.
His boyhood visits to the California mining country had stirred his imagination, and, deciding on a career in mining engineering, he enrolled in the famous Royal School of Mines at Freiberg, Saxony. He graduated in 1879.
Career
Hammond returned to California, where George Hearst, a friend of his father's, gave him his first mining job. Soon afterwards he was offered a position collecting statistics on gold mining for the United States Geological Survey. This meant visiting virtually all the gold mines in California, familiarizing himself with their practice and learning their costs - a valuable experience for a young engineer.
Hammond now began his professional career in earnest. Over the next few years he received commissions to examine and report on a number of mines and soon earned a considerable reputation as a mine valuation expert. In 1884 he became consulting engineer to the mining department of the Union Iron Works in San Francisco, and other appointments were soon added. In 1891 he and a group of associates bought the Bunker Hill and Sullivan mine in the Coeur d'Alene district of Idaho, Hammond becoming its president. Two years later, however, he accepted a new assignment that began the most famous phase of his career. Barney Barnato (Barnett Isaacs), the shrewd South African mining promoter, offered Hammond $25, 000 a year to manage his properties in the new gold field on the Rand in the Transvaal. Hammond - always a believer that the engineer should be well rewarded for his services - asked $50, 000 and was hired.
After six months, however, he left Barnato and shortly afterwards was engaged by Cecil Rhodes as chief consulting engineer of the Consolidated Gold Fields of South Africa, the company controlling the Rhodes interests on the Rand. It was on Hammond's recommendation that Rhodes sold all his outcropping mines and used the proceeds for deep-level development. Hammond was in the forefront of the group among the mining interests in the Transvaal who protested against what they regarded as unfair treatment by President Paul Kruger's government.
The movement eventuated in an attempted revolt - the abortive "Jameson Raid" in January 1896 - as a result of which Hammond and three others were convicted of treason and sentenced to death. All were ultimately released, in Hammond's case after five months in jail and on payment of a $125, 000 fine.
Hammond was chiefly active in public affairs. His first move was, as he put it in his Autobiography, a bit of "prospecting in politics. " After his return to the United States he had developed a close friendship with his fellow Yale man William Howard Taft. When Taft's nomination for the presidency in 1908 became a possibility, Hammond enthusiastically went to work to build up support in the West, and he took an active part in the campaign itself as head of the National League of Republican Clubs. With Taft's election he moved to Washington and became a regular member of the White House circle. But though he had been talked of as a vice-presidential candidate in 1908, Hammond seems to have had little real interest in politics or problems of government, and his political influence in the Taft administration was negligible. He declined Taft's offer of an ambassadorship to China, though he accepted an appointment to represent the President at the coronation of King George V in 1911.
The one public question in which Hammond developed a deep interest was the peace movement. Along with Theodore Marburg, he was one of the founders in 1910 of the American Society for the Judicial Settlement of International Disputes, becoming its president in December of that year. In 1915 he organized the World Court League to carry on a more intensive campaign for an international court. He also took part in the formation of the League to Enforce Peace (1915) and served in its councils until 1919.
In other fields, Hammond became an active participant, beginning in 1908, in the work of the National Civic Federation, an experience which brought him into contact with the labor leader Samuel Gompers and made him a defender of the Gompers brand of unionism.
Most of Hammond's other views were more conservative, though he favored woman suffrage. Among presidents he was never close to Theodore Roosevelt, to Wilson, or to his fellow Californian and mining engineer, Hoover; but he was on intimate terms with Harding and Coolidge.
His last official post was as chairman of the United States Coal Commission, appointed by Harding in 1922 to make a comprehensive survey of the state of the coal industry.
For the next three and a half years he maintained an office in London as consulting engineer, doing work for Rhodes and other clients. In December 1899 he returned to the United States and opened an office in New York City. He also resumed an earlier position as consulting engineer for the Union Pacific and Southern Pacific railroads, thereby developing a close friendship with Edward H. Harriman, and became consulting engineer for the Tonopah, Nev. , gold and silver mine of William C. Whitney.
Through Whitney, Hammond was introduced to Daniel Guggenheim of the famous family of mining promoters, who promptly engaged him as consulting engineer and general manager of the Guggenheim Exploration Company, at a salary of $250, 000 a year plus a 25 per cent interest in all properties he recommended for development. Hammond's total annual income at this time is said to have exceeded a million dollars. For the Guggenheims he was active in securing properties in Mexico, in recommending purchase of a large share in the Nipissing silver mine in Cobalt, Ontario, and in financing the famous Utah Copper Company, of which Hammond was made consulting engineer and later managing director, with Daniel C. Jackling in charge of operations. Because of poor health, Hammond resigned his position with the Guggenheims at the end of 1907.
Although he later engaged in other engineering enterprises - among them the development of water resources in California and in the Yaqui River valley in Sonora, Mexico, the latter in association with Harry Payne Whitney - this marked his real retirement from business and professional work.
Along with his professional work, Hammond had served as professor of mechanical engineering at his alma mater, Yale, from 1902 to 1909. During this period he donated funds for the Hammond Metallurgical Laboratory there.
Hammond took an active part in politics and was a member of the Republican Party.
Membership
The American Institute of Mining Engineers elected Hammond its president in 1907, and conferred honorary membership - its highest honor - on him in 1928.
Personality
Hammond was a man of extraordinary character, ability, and self-confidence - an engineer of high competence, with an uncanny "nose for ore, " a talented business man, and a notable administrator.
Connections
Hammond married Natalie Harris of Harrisville, Mississippi, on January 1, 1881, in Hancock, Maryland. Together they had four sons (one of them died in childhood) and one daughter.