ARSENIC. By FRANK L. HESS. PRODUCTION AND IMPORTS. The output of arsenic in the United States during 1913 was all in the form of white arsenic or arsenious oxide commonly known as "arsenic," and amounted to about 2,513 short tons, valued at $159,236, against 3,141 tons, valued at $190,757, in 1912, a decrease of 628 tons in quantity and of $31,521 in value. White arsenic was produced in this country only from smelter flue or bag-house dusts and by the same three firms which produced it in 1912. The Anaconda Copper Co. saved white arsenic from fumes. made in smelting Butte copper ores at the Great Washoe Smelter at Anaconda, Mont. At Midvale, Utah, the United States Smelting Co. sublimed white arsenic from bag-house dusts collected in smelting Tintic and other Utah ores. The American Smelting & Refining Co. saved its output from flue dusts made from both domestic and foreign ores. There is so little direct profit in the manufacture of white arsenic, owing mostly to the long distances it must be shipped to market, that the smelting companies make it largely because they must prevent its escape into the atmosphere. If the demand and prices justified a larger output the production could be greatly increased. The domestic production and the imports of arsenic compounds of which a record has been kept at the customhouses since 1902 are given in the following table: Production and imports of arsenic, 1902–1913. a Figures furnished by the Division of Statistics, Bureau of Foreign and Domestic Commerce. There were only two producers of arsenic in the United States in 1908, so that the figures of production may not be given. CONSUMPTION. The consumption of arsenic is practically equivalent to the domestic production plus the imports, but besides these a small quantity of arsenic is produced in arsenical or hard lead in smelting arsenical gold and silver ores, and is used for making shot. The use of this hard lead corresponds to the use of antimonial lead similarly produced in smelting. The consumption amounted to about 7,200 short tons of white arsenic, arsenic acid, arsenic sulphide (orpiment and realgar), and elemental arsenic, and 50 tons of Paris green and London purple of foreign production. With the copper arsenate, sodium arsenate, arsenic chloride, arsenical sheep dip, lead arsenate, and other unrecorded imports of arsenic compounds, it is probable that the total consumption was equal to more than 7,500 tons of arsenic compounds, a decrease of 2,500 tons from the consumption of 1912. ERRATUM. Page 285, second paragraph. The statement that the bismuth in the ores was not paid for does not apply to the Highland Mary mine. BISMUTH. By FRANK L. HESS. Writing upon bismuth production and markets in the United States has always been unsatisfactory on account of the secrecy of buyers and smelters and the consequent difficulty of obtaining exact information. As with tin, platinum, cobalt, and nickel, no large deposits of even fairly high-grade bismuth ores have been found in the United States, but, on the other hand, there have been discovered from time to time many small bismuth deposits, or deposits of other ores, particularly of lead, of which small portions were rich in bismuth-bearing minerals. Although many lots of these ores have been mined which carried from 6 to 18 per cent of bismuth, besides gold, silver, and lead, the ores have generally been sold with no payment to the miner for the bismuth content. Two such instances were quoted in the bismuth report of the United States Geological Survey for 1910. One lot of ore produced from the Highland Mary mine, at Leadville, Colo., contained from 11.6 to 15.97 per cent of bismuth, and ore from the Comstock mine, near La Plata, Colo., carried 18 per cent of bismuth; but buyers gave nothing for the bismuth in either ore; yet at 50 cents a pound for the contained bismuth the ore from the Comstock mine should have been worth $180 a ton-much more than the value of the gold and silver which it contained. From the Indiana mine, at Ouray, Colo., 50 tons of ore, containing 20 to 26 per cent of bismuth, are reported to have been sold to a smelter which allowed nothing for the bismuth. Occasionally such lots have been sold for bismuth, but the market has been inconstant and miners have become discouraged in trying to obtain what seemed to them a fair price. It has been stated many times by brokers and others in conversation with the writer, and also by the technical press, that bismuth prices are positively fixed by a group of European producers, composed of one English firm and several Saxon firms, and that territory in which each may operate is also fixed. To the English firm is allotted the United States as a part of its field. The Geological Survey has no direct knowledge of these conditions, but the steady and uniformly high price of metallic bismuth lends color to the statements. It is also stated that should producers of bismuth ores sell to any possible competitor of the foreign syndicate, the syndicate would thereafter refuse to buy ores from the miner at any price. Competition has been closed by taking advantage of the fact that the American production has been sporadic and therefore uncertain. It is also 1 Hess, F. L., Bismuth: U. S. Geol. Survey Mineral Resources, 1910, pt. 1, p. 729, 1911. stated that through its agents the syndicate has refused to sell bismuth to users if at any time they patronized a competitor. Record was kept of consumers' purchases, so that their needs were known, and it could be told whether they were obtaining supplies elsewhere. As the other sources were not entirely dependable, the refusal of the syndicate to sell might mean to a manufacturer of bismuth salts that at some time he could not get the metal he needed and that his trade would be taken by others. Buyers have thus been made afraid and would not purchase bismuth supplies of American production unless tempted by prices so low as to allow the purchaser to hold his cheap stock for gradual consumption. In addition to the uncertain deposits of bismuth and the rich bismuth-bearing ores of other metals, however, the United States has much greater bismuth resources in minute quantities of bismuth which accompany many ores of gold, silver, copper, and lead. Nearly all of these ores, that are mined, are finally assembled at the smelters, where the bismuth has generally gone out of the stacks as fume or into pig, base, or antimonial lead, and so has been lost. The amount of bismuth thus lost has probably exceeded the world's consumption. The work of E. M. Dunn1 indicated that when tested in 1911, the dusts, amounting to 76.8 tons a day, which were caught in the flues at the great Washoe smelter at Anaconda working on Butte copper ores, carried 1.15 per cent of bismuth trioxide (Bi2O,) equivalent to 1.03 per cent of bismuth, indicating about 1,580 pounds a day or 288 tons a year. However, although, according to Dunn's figures, the dusts carry 20 pounds of bismuth per ton, worth during 1913 at least $35 (the New York market price was $1.75 to $2.25 a pound), he concludes that it is not worth saving. It seems safe to prophesy that, if prices remain as they are now, a process will in time be evolved for isolating bismuth from flue dust as rich as this. Probably the larger part but not all of the bismuth in copper ores goes out through the smelter stacks. A table given by Eilers 2 shows the following recoveries of bismuth from blister copper when refined electrolytically: a The blister copper comes principally from the Bingham "porphyry" mines. From the "porphyry deposits" of the Nevada Consolidated Copper Co., at Ely. c Principally from concentrated copper-lead mattes shipped from lead-silver plants of the Rocky Mountain region to the converters at the Omaha lead refinery." d From ores of the Mountain Copper Co. at Iron Mountain, Shasta County, Cal. e From Pacific coast and Alaska copper ores. f From gold and silver ores low in copper, from all parts of Mexico. From copper and lead mattes from local depsosits. From low-grade local copper deposits. 1 Dunn, E. M., Determination of gases in smelter flues; and notes on the determination of dust losses at the Washoe reduction works, Anaconda, Mont.: Am. Inst. Min. Eng. Bull. 80, pp. 2088-2089, August, 1913. 2 Eilers, Anton, Notes on some of the rarer metals in blister copper: Am. Inst. Min. Eng. Bull. 78, pp. 999-1000, June, 1913, |