Reich Reopens Gold Mines

Cromwell Argus, Volume LXX, Issue 3627, 3 July 1939, Page 5

Reich Reopens Gold Mines

IN HIGHEST AUSTRIAN ALPS. An item in Held Marshal Hermann Goering’s four-year-plan (says the ‘Christian Science Monitor’), hitherto little noticed, but of potential significance to the liuaucial and economic pi obtains ol tho Reich, is the -'csumption of gold mining in the “Tauern/’ highest range in the Austrian Alps. An order was recently given to intensify such activities in the mountains round Bad Gastein thermal spa, near Salzburg. This order resulted from the growing scarcity of foreign exchange required for vital imports such as foodstuffs and raw materials and tho finding of experts who estimated tho capacity of those mines at nearly 700.000 troy pounds of pure gold and 2.500.000 pounds of silver. An important reason lor starting - operations at the present time is that the present retrograde movement cf the glaciers tends to facilitate the work for the time being. It is pointed out that the old Romans had already worked tho mines cf Gastein and that, between 1460 and 1500, tho bishops of Salzburg succeeded in obtaining 30,000 pounds of pure gold (valued to-day at 12,600,000 del.) primitive though their technical apparatus was in those medieval days. One of the difficulties to be overcome is the high altitude at which tin deposits lie—mostly above 7.000 feet—and in the complicated process of ex traction. For the ore contains also silver, pyrites, silicate of copper and arsenic, plumbous compounds, and other 'admixtures from which the gold must be freed.