Abstract
TO the student of mining economics, part iv. of the Mines Report is always a volume of special interest. The publication of Colonial and foreign statistics in the present form was due to the initiative of the late Sir Herbert Le Neve Foster, to whom all interested in mineral statistics owe a deep debt of gratitude. No one, however, was more sensible than Le Neve Foster himself of the many shortcomings of this publication, as the writer of the present review can personally testify, and it is a matter of great regret that so little has yet been done to remedy some of the more glaring of the defects of this publication. It is not to be inferred that the removal of these defects is a simple or an easy matter, or even that it lies within the power of any one individual to accomplish it, for it is highly probable that nothing short of an international agreement amongst the great mineral-producing countries of the world can effect this end, even partially. Such a work as the present has for its main object the comparison of the mineral outputs of various nations, and of the conditions under which this output is obtained, mainly with reference to the labour engaged in its production and the relative danger of the miner's occupation. It is a truism that no real comparison is possible unless similar data are compared, and it is here that the main difficulty lies, the same terms being used in different countries with widely different meanings.
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LOUIS, H. International Mineral Statistics 1 . Nature 85, 211–213 (1910). https://doi.org/10.1038/085211a0
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/085211a0