Technology and Culture

TECHNOLOGY AND CULTURE Book Reviews 361 Technology on the Frontier: Mining in Old Ontario. By Dianne Newell. Vancouver: University of British Columbia Press, 1986. Pp. xi + 220; illustrations, maps, tables, notes, appendix, bibliography, indexes. SC24.00; $19.50. The role of technology in economic and social change is coming under increasing scrutiny by historians. The subsidiary questions of innovation, adaptation, and diffusion are of great interest not only to analysts of the technological processes but by scholars as far afield as, for instance, those debating the Turner thesis of frontier adaptation. These strands have been woven together in the present monograph, which offers a selection of case histories of mining technology as it developed in Ontario during the latter half of the 19th century. As befits its original appearance as a doctoral dissertation, it is thoroughly researched and copiously annotated. The selection of time and place was fortunate. The time was that period in which protoindustrial and empirical methods were being supplanted by methods founded on scientific research. The locale, Ontario Province, has three mineral regions. The first, the Upper Great Lakes, is dominated by Precambrian granites and Keweenaw rift basalts, productive of iron, nickel, silver, and copper. The second, the Southeastern District, is located in the Grenville metamorphic belt, having occurrences of gold, lead, apatite, and mica. The third, the Peninsula District, has a somewhat later sedimentary history produc­ tive of extensive salt beds and some petroleum. Although few of these occurrences were bonanzas, their diversity guaranteed a wide spec­ trum of cases for Dianne Newell to explore in dealing with the evolu­ tion of mining and milling. The book has six divisions. The first, chiefly a restatement of current historiography of technological growth and evolution, is of small in­ terest except to specialists in this specific area. The second, “The Innovations,” is a series of very brief sketches of equipment and pro­ cesses employed in the extractive mining of the period, together with accounts of the changes, if any, that took place. The third section deals with the mechanism of technological diffusion: imported technicians, educational institutions, professional journals, and the like. The last three deal with developments in each of the districts named, emphasiz­ ing a review of selected mines or mineral locations. Ofunusual interest are accounts of exploitation of the Silver Islet and the Sudbury nickel orebodies. Since the book first saw the light of day as a dissertation, it is somewhat arid stylistically, though its scholarliness is beyond question. Nonetheless, two points of serious criticism must be offered. The first is the statement (p. 1), “[Before 1840] some mining occurred in the settled regions of eastern North America, but it comprised mainly non-metallic minerals and was conducted on a small-scale, personal 362 Book Reviews TECHNOLOGY AND CULTURE basis for local markets.” I cannot accept this thesis; it ignores the Appalachian piedmont copper and Midwestern lead industries, both ofconsiderable significance prior to 1840, not to mention the southern Appalachian gold rush of 1820-35. One wonders why the author’s dissertation committee permitted this assertion to go unchallenged. The other stricture is more general: when dealing with hard-rock mining and extractive metallurgy, Newell appears to avoid any men­ tion of the composition of the ore values, the nature ofthe vein-matter, or the geology of deposition. Since these points are extremely critical to the technology of mining, milling, and smelting, the reader is conse­ quently offered conclusions for which basic substantiation is missing. By paying close attention to the description of milling processes, the reader may occasionally be able to puzzle out the nature of an orebody, but this is no very satisfactory solution. For instance, a native copper deposit in traprock implies an extractive metallurgy much different than that of a sulfide copper ore in granite, yet these crucial geological data are seldom provided. My impression is that the monograph smells somewhat of the lamp: the author’s intense interest in the disputations among schools rather overshadows her attention to the evolution of the technology itselfand the constraints that directed it. Nevertheless, I am inclined to com­ mend the study to those who are concerned with the subject, for its virtues far outweigh...