Page:VCH Cornwall 1.djvu/666

 A HISTORY OF CORNWALL Before closing we have to consider what is perhaps the most noteworthy feature of Cornish tin mining at present, namely, the relations between tinner and smelter. Originally, as stated, the miner smelted his own ores, but blowing-houses, when established, became separate ventures, the owners fusing the miners' tin for a percentage of the product, 1 the smelter having bargained for the parcel brought him, and given his note to deliver the quantity of white tin agreed upon at the ensuing coinage. 3 These notes, which were transferable by endorsement, 3 the tinners, being usually in want of ready money, sold to the merchant dealers, as we have already seen. In the eighteenth century, however, came a change, the merchant dealers giving place to the smelters, who, from that day, have acted as financiers of the stannaries. At first, the smel- ters simply bought back, at a discount, their notes from the tin owners, 4 and as long as the coin- age system continued this system of indirect pur- chase was bound to continue ; for to buy an article of fluctuating price, which could not be sold save at periodical coinages, would have been too speculative a business for the smelter to under- take. To the tinner it obviously made no differ- ence where he took his ore, inasmuch as all the smelters made similar assays and charged the same toll. 6 Since the abolition of the coinage, the smelters have laid aside their former methods and bought the ore from the mine owner direct. To understand how heavily this bears upon the mines, it will be necessary to examine more closely into the conditions under which the ore is sold. Of these, the chief is known as the Tin Standard. This is an amount paid by the smelter per hundredweight of metal contained in the ore, as calculated from a dry assay, after the deduction of one and one-fourth from the product for every twenty for returning charges. 8 By an old custom there is also a deduction on the weight of the parcel of tin ore of three pounds per hundredweight, and it is customary also to reckon the price by the nearest eighth of a pound above or below the calculated price. These provisions are anything but fair. The smelter buys, not on actual contents of the ore, but on the contents he assumes he will recover by the process of smelting. The difference between that and the wet assay, which gives the actual contents of the ore, is variously stated at from five to ten per cent, in favour of the latter, but as we have to deal with commercial values that consideration may for the present be dis- missed, by taking it for granted that the smelter 1 Add. MS. 6682, fol. 297. 8 Borlase, Natural Hist, of Cornwall, 1 8 1. 3 Pryce, Mineralogia Cornubiensis, 292. 4 Ibid. 292, 293. 6 ' The System of Selling Tin Ore in Cornwall,' Salmon's Mining and Smelting Magazine, v, 6-8. 5 Cornish Mining, 1 6. loses such a percentage in the process of smelting, and is therefore entitled to this allowance. 7 But this is not all which the smelter claims, for since the standard is the price which he pays for the metallic contents of the ore, it follows that the difference between such a price and that at which he sells (the market value) represents gross profits. A second consideration is the ' returning charges,' or the assumed cost of smelting, deducted in mineral from each batch of black tin sold by the miner. To be fair the charges for smelting should be upon a cash basis, varying solely with the rise or fall in the cost of labour, fuel and fluxes. As it is in kind, the higher the price of black tin the higher the price which the miner must pay the smelter. 8 Thus the miners in the years of 1883 to 1900, paid a yearly average of forty per cent, over even what the smelters claimed as their actual cost, 9 and the returning charge which, according to the standard, the miner believes to be only six and one-fourth per cent., because it is one and one- fourth per cent, of twenty, is on an average quality of black tin really ten per cent. 9 By ' draftage,' another trade custom, the smelter is allowed three pounds per hundred- weight on every parcel of black tin he buys. At its inception this was given for ' the turn of the scale ' on all the black tin purchased by the smelter, on condition that he allowed the same draftage on all the white tin he delivered. In the days of barter, pure and simple, the arrange- ment was perfectly equitable, but with the pass- ing of the coinage dues the smelter, who might reasonably have been expected either to abolish draftage in its entirety or retain it so, continued to enforce the clause so far as receiving it from the miner was concerned, while he waived it in his delivery of white tin. It can easily be figured that the miner, under the draftage allow- ance, has to turn over to the smelter the rough equivalent of five per cent, in cash on his gross turnover, while the smelter will have the assurance that, even at the worst of times, the allowance is not likely to be worth less than forty-four per cent, on his working costs (as it was in 1896), and, with a good price for tin, it may be worth ninety-three, as it was in igoo. 10 The smelter is sure of a handsome profit, there- fore, even when the miner works at a loss. The actual loss of metal in the smelting of the tin has never been accurately determined ; u but, in any case, it is a question for which the 7 Cornish Mining, 1 6. 8 Ibid. 1 6. Four pounds sterling per ton of metal would be a liberal estimate of the cost of smelting, yet, since 1883, only once has the smelter received less, while, on an average, he received almost fifty per cent. more. 9 Cornish Mining, 1 7. 10 Ibid. 1 8. " Ibid. 20. 562