OLD BRAZILIAN GOLD MINE

Press, Volume XCIII, Issue 27962, 8 May 1956, Page 10

OLD BRAZILIAN GOLD MINE

British Company May Be Forced To Close

STRIKES THREATEN STABILITY (From a Reuter Correspondent) NOVA LIMA, (Brazil). These are crisis days for the British company which owns Brazil’s only gold mine, one of the deepest in the world, at Morro Velho. Production costs, according to officials of the St John d el Rey Mining Company, Ltd., nave risen by 85 per cent, in the two years to .January, 1956. while the company s selling price has increased by only 15 per cent. The result is that a point is near where unless the Brazilian Government takes urgent measures to give assistance, the company may find itself unable to continue. Should that happen it might prove a point of no return, forcing an enterprise run by British interests for nearly a century and a half to cease a * tlv lt Ies ’ That would mean the end of the company’s social welfare scheme, a pioneering* effort in Brazil which affects the lives of the 5000 workers and their families numbering m all about 40,000 persons. The structure of social welfare is one of wmch a country, far less a company, might well be proud. The workers, whose average wages are higher than those generally ruling in Brazil, live in houses with a rent of two shillings a month They are provided with water and light at less than cost price, they have free transport. Their children have schools. They enjoy medical and hospital treatment and 11 a Fi a recreational facilities. All this is threatened by the attitude of a strong trade union directed by extreme left-wing leaders who, in 1955 alone, were responsible for three strikes.

While the situation is receiving the attention of the Government, which insists that it wants to see industry expanding production of gold goes on at Morro Velho in beautiful mountainous country.

When the company started operations in 1830. the voyage of the British staff to Rio took six weeks. From Rio to Morro Velho. the overland trip took from 15 to 20 days, the men on horses and their wives and children in litters. Today, it is a very different story. A pleasant flight of little more than an hour from Rio leaves only a 10-mile trip to Morro Velho, where shafts have been sunk as deep as 8000 feet. Although mining and reduction methods .have improved out of all recognition, it takes one ton of ore-bear-ing stone to produce 10 grammes, or a small coffee-sponful. of gold. Production runs at 3500 kilogrammes (just over three and a half tons) of gold a year, and the company sells half a ton of silver and 1000 tons of industrial arsenic each year as byproducts

Work, however, goes on at Morro Velho against a background of deeplyrooted, superstition. The miners consider it unlucky for a priest or a woman to go down the mine. In recent times, however, an exception was made when a priest took a sacred statue down the deep shaft. It is commonplace in Brazil to see crosses on hill-tops, for the people are deeply religious; but the tall cross on the summit of Morro Velho, illuminated by night, has a special protective significance for the miners. About 30 years

ago, a grass fire swept the area of the mine in exceptionally dry weather. It crept up the Old Hill and watchers down below saw the flames devour the cross. A new one was erected. Today Morro Velho faces an unknown future. Disasters have been known in the past, but there seems to be general agreement that the biggest disaster of all would be for the mine to close down.