Page:Vol 3 History of Mexico by H H Bancroft.djvu/602

582. The payment by shares, partido, which soon predominated over the daily wages given to tanda gangs, could not fail to promote the interests of both employers and laborers, although the gambling table received only too much of the increased earnings.

For the first decades the method of extracting metals was so backward that only rich ores could be worked, especially in regions where fuel was scarce. In 1557, however, Bartolomé de Medina, a miner of the district of Pachuca, discovered the amalgamation process, and bestowed on the world a boon of which New Spain may be proud. His plan of extracting the fine metals from ores with the aid of quicksilver rendered results so satisfactory that but few improvements have since been introduced. Little is known of the discoverer, a fact which almost implies that he derived little benefit from a discovery which was of vast importance to the mining industry. Ores which formerly had been considered worthless, were now regarded with more interest; veins held to be unproductive were worked anew', and so rapid was the adoption of the process that within five years Zacatecas alone had thirty-five reduction works, and yet they by no means displaced existing methods in every place.