Books: Mining Engineer

PAY STREAK—John Baragwanath—Doubleday, Doran ($2).

Except for the pontifical autobiography that the late John Hays Hammond wrote at the age of 80, U. S. mining engineers have been surprisingly reticent about their world-wide rovings, their climbs up high mountains and descents into the deep earth. Last week a successful mining engineer now little more than half Hammond's age offered a volume of reminiscence as informal as Hammond's was ponderous, less than half as long and twice as funny, and dealing with events that were as inconsequential as those that Hammond recorded were important. Saying...