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Arthur Launcelot Collins was a British metallurgist, mining engineer and mine manager of properties in Mexico and the United States. He was born 8 July 1868 in Truro, Cornwall, England, the son of a prominent mining expert, Joseph Henry Collins, and brother of Henry, George, and Edgar Collins and William Collins, the Bishop of Gibraltar, Spain. Joseph H. Collins founded, and with his sons Henry, Arthur, and George, operated J. H. Collins & Sons, Mining and Metallurgical Engineers, an international mining consulting business headquartered in London, England. When he was 15 years of age, Arthur Collins traveled with his father and brothers Henry and George to Andalusia, Spain, in the great mining region of Rio Tinto, where Joseph Collins was appointed chief chemist and assayer of the Peña del Hierro copper mine.〔 Under his father, Arthur began his practical work in the laboratory and continued his studies in chemistry and mineralogy, and was soon employed as assayer and underground surveyor by the Peninsular Copper Co., in Southern Spain.〔 Joseph H. Collins and his sons returned to England in 1885, where Arthur was put in charge of an experimental smelting works near Breage, in Cornwall.〔 In 1886, Arthur was appointed as assayer and chemist at the Berkeland zinc mine, near Stavanger, Norway. It was here that he erected his first concentrating mill.〔 For the next few years he was engaged as a partner in the firm of J. H. Collins & Sons, examining and investing in mines around the world, including in Burma, Norway, Spain, Australia, Tasmania, and Mexico. In 1892 he was appointed geologist and mining engineer to the Amir of Afghanistan, and spent a year traveling in the region.〔 In early 1894, Arthur and his brother George left England to manage mine holdings in Central City and Georgetown, Colorado, as stockholders and consulting engineers for the Gold Coin Mines Company of New York.〔 In the following year Arthur married Marguerite Morton Becker, the daughter of Gilpin County Judge Clayton F. Becker.〔MaryJoy Martin ''The Corpse on Boomerang Road'', pp. 32-33.〕 At age 31, Arthur Collins became general manager of the Smuggler-Union Mining Company which was a significant silver mine near Telluride in San Miguel County, Colorado. While the Smuggler-Union was a major producer in the district, its output consisted of low-grade ore. ==Increasing efficiency in the Smuggler-Union Mine== In order to increase profits, Collins ended the shift fireboss positions in the mine. He also introduced the "old Cornish system" of mining, which he was familiar with from his native Cornwall. It was referred to as the "contract system," or "fathoms," and essentially turned mining into piecework. The system became a point of contention between the Smuggler-Union Company and Telluride's Local 63 of the Western Federation of Miners, which complained that the wider the vein of ore, the lower a miner's wages would be.〔Wilbur Fiske Stone, ''History of Colorado'', 1918, p. 848.〕 But Arthur Collins had little use for the union, and declared that there was nothing to arbitrate.〔Wilbur Fiske Stone, ''History of Colorado'', 1918, p. 849.〕 抄文引用元・出典: フリー百科事典『 ウィキペディア(Wikipedia)』 ■ウィキペディアで「Arthur L. Collins」の詳細全文を読む スポンサード リンク
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