Chapter II: Fever of the Copper Ore  (continued)

The Consolidated Mining Company was especially harmful because of its affiliations with the ruling Liberal party. Until 1891, mining laws allowed friends of the government to obtain large swaths of land and either to hold them in limbo or to pass them over to the Consolidated Mining Company. Private individuals finding mineralization on such land had no alternative but to reveal its whereabouts for a small remuneration.

Newfoundland's mercantile system of giving credit rather than cash for fish made it next to impossible for fishermen to develop even unlicensed territories. Credit did not buy gunpowder and pickaxes; nor did it pay the government surveyors' obligatory and exorbitant fees.

For those who managed to borrow money, further hazzards arose. Some prospectors discovered orebodies in unlicensed regions, staked the area legitimately, worked it enough to ascertain its value and were then 'regretfully informed' by the surveyor general that he had just realised that Mr. X - usually a politician - had prior claim to the property. The registration fee was returned to the prospector, and the claim fell to Mr. X. Incredible as it may seem, one man visited the surveyor general's office to examine the records and maps of claims staked on the Island and was told that the office "objected to giving such general information to private individuals"!⁽⁴⁴⁾

Only after copper mining came to a near standstill around 1889 did the Newfoundland government try to salvage the copper industry. In his report for the year 1890, the surveyor general complained that the lack of competent and inexpensive government surveyors debarred most people from gaining access to mineral lands, and proposed amendments to the Crown Lands Act to give prospectors more initiative.⁽⁴⁵⁾ The amendments were enacted in 1891, but in 1892 a disastrous fire obliterated the surveyor general's office (and most of St. John's), greatly hampering verification of claim ownership and development work.

The government made another salvage attempt in 1910 and 1911 by passing two copper smelting acts to encourage small mine owners to work their properties. The 1910 Copper Smelting Act proposed, among other things, to abolish import duties on smelting equipment and to establish a copper smelter at York Harbour in the Bay of Islands in western Newfoundland. When the 1910 act received negligible reaction, the government passed a second act in 1911 that promised to subsidize up to $50,000 of the smelting costs for each mine owner. In 1916, the government made a final, futile gesture of financing an electric copper smelter in St. John's to combat high wartime freight rates and to provide copper for ammunition.⁽⁴⁶⁾

Yet at the same time as trying to boost the copper industry, the government in 1913 cancelled the Geological Survey of Newfoundland, which had begun in 1864 concurrently with the start of the Tilt Cove mine and the copper boom. Proponents of the cancellation argued that the Survey had become superfluous because of Newfoundland's dwindled mining activity. In fact, the Survey's cessation removed the one reliable source of geological information and encouragement to continue mineral exploration on the Island.

In the end, all government efforts to save the copper mines failed. The tremendous devaluation of copper after World War I coupled with the long years of political and economic disadvantages had effectively quenched the Newfoundland copper industry. Over a decade intervened before it began its slow revival.