The  Bureau  of  Mines  engineers  are  given  certain  data  sheets  for  col-
lecting confidential  information  regarding  various  features  of  mining
operations;  among  others  there  are  sheets  relating  to  costs  of  mining.
While  the  bureau  has  met  with  response  on  the  part  of  mine  operators
very  generally,  and  I  think  has  established  itself  as  a  bureau  to  be
trusted,  so  that  operators  feel  they  are  safe  in  giving  the  bureau  confi-
dential information,  the  greatest  difficulty  is  to  make  use  of  that  informa-
tion.
Very  few  of  the  mines  have  any  system  of  account  keeping,  and
they  often  do  not  know  what  their  mine  construction  costs,  or  what  are
the  items  that  make  up  the  cost  of  mining.  I  can  mention  one  very
extreme  case  where  a  mining  concern  for  years  made  no  distribution
of  cost  items;  the  only  accounts  that  had  been  kept  were  the  totals  of
the  amounts  paid  out  and  the  moneys,  received.  It  had  no  knowledge
whatever  of  what  its  product  was  costing,  no  separation  between  equip-
ment and  running  cost.
That  is  the  most  extreme  case  I  ever  ran  across,  but  there  are  all
kinds  of  intermediate  conditions  found  in  mine  cost  keeping.  It  should
be  of  great  value  to  the  operators  and  to  the  outside  public  to  formulate
some  common  system  of  cost  keeping;  it  would  then  become  compara-
tively, easy  for  the  s  Bureau  of  Mines  or  other  agency  to  get  accurate,
understandable  mining  costs,  which  could  be  used  in  averages  for  dis-
tricts without  giving  the  names  of  mines,  but  until  that  is  done,  from
what  data  has  come  in,  I  really  do  not  see  how  any  compilation  of  value
can  be  made.
