Not Good Nor Bad

At the conclusion of Book I, Agricola finishes his apologetic for metals as such, with the general point that metals are externals. They are neither good nor bad in themselves, but they can be used well or badly according to the intentions of the person using them. It's ourselves we need to watch out for, not our materials. God made metals, and as part of his creation, they are not wrong or evil.

Having already discussed gold and silver, and the uses and dangers of money at some length, he discusses some problems people have with iron, lead and bronze, mostly in their use as weapons and in instruments of torture (molten lead going back at least to the ancient Greeks). He then enumerates a number of peaceful uses for the same metals-- tools that are used every day, as well as the decorative arts.

He then goes on to the mining profession. There is a certain paradigm that Agricola takes for granted, in which someone owns the land (and therefore controls the mine and its profits); there is a superintendent who distributes shares of the profits; there is a foreman and finally, there are workers. Agricola favors this type of ownership pyramid. He doesn't for example suggest reforming it altogether, regarding the metal as a shared resource and working it as a cooperative. However, he notes some abuses that have occurred and need to be watched out for.

The land ownership piece is critical where mining is concerned because only certain land has mineral deposits. Sometimes, land is outright stolen (Agricola seems to be talking, with bitterness, about some sort of eminent domain arrangement) or taken over through violence. Other times, certain mine superintendents have extorted money from the land owner under false pretenses, and at still other times, mine foremen have been known to conceal productive veins by blocking them with clay, and come back later to get the ore out. And often enough, mines have been worked by slave labor-- though Agricola says this is no longer the case in his time.

Agricola points out that all these abuses are illegal. An intelligent and alert mine owner can obtain justice from the magistrates, or may even be able to prevent them before they start.