The Standard group of claims consists of the following patented lode claims: Standard, Banner, Snow Line, Sancho, Sandwich, Youngstown, Sullivan Fraction, Banner Fraction, Parallel, Little Chap, Mammoth Fraction, a portion of the Mammoth, and Tariff, also the Columbia, Crown Point and Tom Reed, all located in the Coeur d’Alene silver-lead mineral belt, Lalande mining district, Shoshone county, Idaho, one mile from Burke, also the Union Mill-site located at Wallace, Idaho, together with water rights and flumes from which is developed about three hundred horse-power. The Standard claim was located May 7, 1885, by Timothy McCarthy, Timothy Hynes. Frank Hanson and John H. Simmons.
All the claims in the Standard group are patented, the patents having issued direct to the Standard Mining Company, with the exception of the Mammoth, Tariff and Mammoth Fraction. These claims are patented, but the patent issued direct to the original owners and was afterward transferred to the Standard Mining Company. The Standard Mining Company is a corporation of Idaho. Its capital stock is five hundred thousand dollars, divided into five hundred thousand shares of the par value of one dollar each. The officers of the company are as follows: Amasa B. Campbell, president; John A. Finch, vice-president and treasurer; W. E. Finch, secretary. The stock is held principally by the Finch & Campbell Syndicate of Youngstown, Ohio, Chicago and Milwaukee.
The property was purchased by the Standard Company in the spring of 1891, when the development work was commenced. The first ore was struck in the fall of 1892, and since that time it has been a steady shipper and dividend-payer. The property has been worked through four tunnels. The lower, or Campbell tunnel, as it is called, is two thousand nine hundred and fifty feet long, and is nine hundred feet below the upper tunnel. In all there arc probably over ten thousand feet of tunnel. At the end of this long tunnel is the chamber for the hoisting engine. The chamber is one hundred feet long, fifty feet wide and thirty-six feet high. Here they have a twenty by sixty first-motion hoisting engine, built by Fraser & Chalmers, capable of hoisting two thousand five hundred feet. The shaft is down two hundred feet from the Campbell tunnel, and a drift has been run to strike the vein, where it is found they have an ore chute over six hundred feet long and from fifteen to forty feet wide, lint little stoping has been done from this level up.
The ore is silver-lead, and the average assay of the entire vein is ten to fifteen per cent lead and twelve to fifteen ounces silver. This ore is transported from the mine, one mile below Burke, Idaho, to the concentrator, which is located at Wallace, a distance of six miles. Here the ore is concentrated into a shipping product. It requires about five and eight-tenths tons of crude ore to make one ton of concentrates, or ship-ping product. The capacity of the mill is six hundred tons of crude ore in twenty-four hours. The average assay of concentrates is fifty-eight to sixty per cent lead and about fifty-eight to sixty ounces of silver to the ton.
Up to May 1, 1899, the Standard shipped 68,295 tons of concentrates, the net value of which (after paying freight charges to the smelter and treatment on the ore, which averaged about twenty-two dollars per ton), was $3,416,248.87. The company has paid in dividends the sum of $1,775,000.00, or $3.55 per share. The original cost of the property was $33,804.80. The amount expended for improvements and equipment to date is $280,000.00, all of which was taken out of the mine in addition to the amount paid in dividends. The property is under the management of Finch & Campbell of Spokane, Washington, their representative being H. R, Allen, of Wallace, Idaho.
The Standard is one of the best equipped mines in the world, and it was developed from the grass roots by and under the supervision of Archie McCallum, who is at present in charge of the mine.