Mining the Borderlands: Industry, Capital, and the Emergence of Engineers in the Southwest Territories by Sarah E. M. Grossman (review)

The transition from craft-based to university-based credentialing for American engineers in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries long has been an important topic in the history of American technology and culture. In Mining the Borderlands, Grossman builds upon the seminal work of Edwin Layton (1971), and of others such as Hovis and Mouat (1996). To this well-established corpus, Grossman brings a specific focus on mining districts of the U.S.-Mexico border.

Chapter one sets the pre-Civil War scene. Even with rich silver lodes, the southwestern frontier proved unprofitable for mining. Its remoteness made the shipment of heavy mining equipment difficult. Apache raids, the language barrier with Mexican miners, and hard-to-process ores added to the difficulties. Mining companies hired well-educated Freiberg engineers as a strategy to raise investment capital. Despite their expertise, engineers such as Guido Küstel and Raphael Pumpelly could not turn a profit for their employers.

Chapter two focuses on the development of mining engineering education in the United States between 1860 and 1900. This followed the pattern of other engineering professions, with the Morrill Land Grant Act (1862) enabling new mining schools such as the Columbia School of Mines. In the nineteenth century, many engineers could claim their title through practical experience. After about 1900, however, employers wanted college-educated engineers. Perhaps because of the educational requirement, many mining engineers were insecure when dealing with miners.

Chapter three picks up on this insecurity, and I found this chapter to be the book’s most interesting and original contribution. Mining engineers performed a balancing act: on the one hand, meeting with corporate bosses and investors in big city boardrooms, and on the other, supervising blue-collar laborers in remote locations. To overcome their “deeply conflicted sense of masculine identity” (p. 76), engineers adopted a frontiersman tough-guy image. This imagery was well-demonstrated at the Colorado School of Mines, where “wearing a Stetson . . . was a privilege reserved for ‘manly’ seniors” (p. 71). Engineers were also insecure when dealing with miners’ unions. Their claim of disliking unions because of union tactics and not goals was undercut by union demands for higher wages, which reduced profits.

Chapter four compares the rhetorical strategies of two self-taught mining engineers who wrote reports about the Copper Queen Mine. James Douglas was impressed by the ore body and, because of his encouragement, Phelps Dodge became a part-owner. John Daniel was similarly impressed by the ore body, but thought it would be soon exhausted and thus was not a good investment. The analysis is uninformed by rhetorical theory and the differences are easily explained (as Grossman points out) by Daniel’s lack of familiarity with western mining. Also, the photograph of a meeting in the Copper Queen (p. 105) is rhetorically questionable: the text claims it “demonstrates the scale of excavation”, but the photograph appears to show a natural limestone cavern that was part of the original mine.

Chapters five and six examine the role of mining engineers with the adoption of mass mining, essentially defined by open pit mines, low grade ore, and de-skilled labor. Grossman’s main contribution here is through a biographical approach, explaining the challenges to mining engineers such as Daniel Jackling, L. D. Ricketts, and William F. Staunton (and lesser-knowns) within corporate bureaucracies such as Phelps Dodge and the Guggenheim Exploration Company. These two chapters and the book’s overall thesis would have been more convincing if Grossman had applied the educational categories from chapter two. For example, the author doesn’t tell us that Ricketts was a Princeton-trained chemist known mainly as a metallurgist (which also raises the question of the relationship between metallurgical and mining engineering).

The book would also be much more useful with a biographical table showing life dates (the text gives none) and educational...