Tribute mining is an arrangement by which a person, partnership or company works a mine or part of a mine, under a tribute agreement with the titleholder of that mine, and either pays to or receives from the titleholder a proportion of the production of the mine or of the value of the production. Miners working in this way are known as tribute miners or tributers, and the mine is said to be worked 'on tribute'. The arrangement differs from conventional contracting and employment, both in its nature and its origins.
A tributer is distinguished, from both an independent contractor and employee, in that the tributer takes over the running of the mine, or an agreed part of it, and is remunerated in a specific manner. The origins of tribute mining lie in the
Stannaries
A stannary was an administrative division established under stannary law in the English counties of Cornwall and Devon to manage the collection of tin coinage, which was the duty payable on the metal tin smelted from cassiterite ore mined in th ...
of
Cornwall
Cornwall (; or ) is a Ceremonial counties of England, ceremonial county in South West England. It is also one of the Celtic nations and the homeland of the Cornish people. The county is bordered by the Atlantic Ocean to the north and west, ...
and
Devon
Devon ( ; historically also known as Devonshire , ) is a ceremonial county in South West England. It is bordered by the Bristol Channel to the north, Somerset and Dorset to the east, the English Channel to the south, and Cornwall to the west ...
, and the
Stannary laws.
, a
mining engineer
Mining engineering is the extraction of minerals from the ground. It is associated with many other disciplines, such as mineral processing, exploration, excavation, geology, metallurgy, geotechnical engineering and surveying. A mining engineer m ...
, left a detailed description of how tribute mining was practiced, in the tin and copper mines of Cornwall and Devon during the 19th Century.
The practice of tribute mining spread to other countries. In English-speaking
settler colonial
Settler colonialism is a logic and structure of displacement by Settler, settlers, using colonial rule, over an environment for replacing it and its indigenous peoples with settlements and the society of the settlers.
Settler colonialism is ...
societies, the spread of the practice was enhanced by the widespread emigration of
Cornish miners and mine managers. Cornish influence also led to tribute mining spreading to mines in other countries, including to the
Alten Copper Mines, in Arctic Norway.
Advantages of tribute mining are that it is a form of
profit sharing
Profit sharing refers to various incentive plans introduced by businesses which provide direct or indirect payments to employees, often depending on the company's profitability, employees' regular salaries, and bonuses. In publicly traded compa ...
, encouraging
productivity
Productivity is the efficiency of production of goods or services expressed by some measure. Measurements of productivity are often expressed as a ratio of an aggregate output to a single input or an aggregate input used in a production proce ...
, and that the rights and obligations of the parties are subject to a specific written agreement that is enforceable. A potential disadvantage is that the tribute miners share the risk of the mining venture, such as downside variability of
ore grade
Ore is natural rock or sediment that contains one or more valuable minerals, typically including metals, concentrated above background levels, and that is economically viable to mine and process. The grade of ore refers to the concentration ...
and the actual hours of work and other costs incurred during mining. A tributer needed skills, other than purely mining skills, to assess the likely value of production in the ground to be worked, under the tribute agreement, and to strike an appropriate deal on the share of production that is appropriate to the costs and effort of the mining work.
Tributers may or may not have had to fund, in part or in full, processing of the ore, mining tools, mine timber, explosives, drills, candles and other consumables necessary for mining, or the tribute agreement may make such items the responsibility of the titleholder of the mine. Mining
trade unions
A trade union (British English) or labor union (American English), often simply referred to as a union, is an organization of workers whose purpose is to maintain or improve the conditions of their employment, such as attaining better wages ...
generally opposed tribute mining, preferring payments to miners to be in the form of
hourly wages.
In Australia, tribute agreements fall within the jurisdiction of
Warden's courts, which date from the period of the
Australian gold rushes
During the Australian gold rushes, starting in 1851, significant numbers of workers moved from elsewhere in History of Australia, Australia and overseas to where gold had been discovered. Gold had been found several times before, but the Colo ...
. Tribute agreements were defined and regulated under mining legislation. The arrangement commonly arose when the titleholder (in Australia, almost always a lessee) of a mine ceased working the mine, but agreed to let another party work the mine, usually on a smaller scale than previously.
Usually, tribute miners would be former employees of a hitherto closed or partially-closed mine, with some existing knowledge of its ore body and its likely extent and
strike and dip
In geology, strike and dip is a measurement convention used to describe the plane orientation or Attitude (geometry), attitude of a Plane (geometry), planar Geology, geologic feature. A feature's strike is the azimuth of an imagined horizontal ...
. However, sometimes specific areas of a working mine were given over to particular miners, who had been selected by management, to work on tribute in a mutually-beneficial arrangement. Tribute mining may be applied to any kind of mine but, in Australia, is especially pertinent to
hard-rock mining, particularly
gold mines
Gold mining is the extraction of gold by mining.
Historically, mining gold from alluvial deposits used manual separation processes, such as gold panning. The expansion of gold mining to ores that are not on the surface has led to more complex ...
but also mines for non-ferrous metallic minerals such as copper,
tin, and silver-lead-zinc ores. In
Western Australia
Western Australia (WA) is the westernmost state of Australia. It is bounded by the Indian Ocean to the north and west, the Southern Ocean to the south, the Northern Territory to the north-east, and South Australia to the south-east. Western Aust ...
, tributers had an industry organisation to represent their interests, the Prospectors and Tributers Association.
In
Zimbabwe
file:Zimbabwe, relief map.jpg, upright=1.22, Zimbabwe, relief map
Zimbabwe, officially the Republic of Zimbabwe, is a landlocked country in Southeast Africa, between the Zambezi and Limpopo Rivers, bordered by South Africa to the south, Bots ...
, tribute agreements became a mechanism for involving local
artisanal miners in the production of
chromite
Chromite is a crystalline mineral composed primarily of iron(II) oxide and chromium(III) oxide compounds. It can be represented by the chemical formula of Iron, FeChromium, Cr2Oxygen, O4. It is an oxide mineral belonging to the spinel group. The ...
from mines owned by transnational companies.
References
{{reflist
External links
*
On the Economy of the Mines of Cornwall and Devon - Transactions of the Geological Society, John Taylor (1779-1863)
An example of legislation covering Tribute Agreements (No. 50 of 1920. An ACT to amend the Mining Act, 1904, Western Australia, 31 Dec 1920)
Mining
Mining law and governance