Silver Is Back

In the East Kootenays, Slocan and other silver-bearing areas of British Columbia, some 500 old sourdoughs and hopeful young war veterans chipped away last week in search of new lodes. Virgin claims were staked out, old claims rechecked. In Silverton, Sandon and many another mine town, shutters came down and hopes went up.

Silver, stagnant at 40-c- an oz. in wartime, had leaped to 71.11-c- last January when the Canadian ceiling was lifted, and again had bounded to 90.5-c- on the new U.S. price boost (TIME, July 29). For established silver producers like big Consolidated Mining & Smelting Co., which turns out 55% of Canada's 13 million oz. a year, this was heaven on earth. For hundreds of mines, abandoned when silver plummeted to around 30-c- an oz. in the '30s, it could mean revival.

Cobalt Comeback. One of the first towns to revive was Ontario's Cobalt. Its fabulous story began in 1903 when Fred La Rose, a railway worker, picked up a piece of ore in an isolated rail cut. He thought it was copper; on assay it showed a phenomenal 13,000 oz. of silver to the ton. Prospectors poured in, and made one jewelry-store strike after another. In four years, 44 mines were opened. By 1916 Cobalt mines had produced 300,000,000 oz. of silver. By 1922 the richest veins had petered out and the price had hit rock bottom.

For 20 years Cobalt was a ghost town. Then in 1940 it hit the comeback trail. The war created a heavy U.S. demand for cobalt as an alloy in cutting tools. In the town's heyday, get-rich-quick silver miners had tossed cobalt ore aside as useless; now it was worth over 80-c- a pound, and the old cobalt dumps were in demand.

With the new price of silver providing an added shot in the arm, Cobalt's prospects are rosy. Already five mines are back in production. A new $600,000 smelter will soon begin refining silver and cobalt on the spot. As newcomers drift in and new homes go up, some of the optimism of old-time Cobalt is being recaptured. Says a sign outside Michael Brosko's store: "Silver is back and so am I."

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