Cost Book Mining Companies - Definition - Law Dictionary Home Dictionary Definition cost-book-mining-companies

Definition :

Cost-book mining companies. The statutory regulations relating to these Companies are contained in the Stannaries Acts, 1869 (32 & 33 Vict. c. 19) and 1887 (50 & 51 Vict. c. 43), and the Companies Act, 1929. The Latter Act (s. 357) has preserved the then existing provisions of the earlier Acts. Subject to the statutory provisions, it maybe said that these companies are formed thus:-A number of adventures, who have obtained permission from the landowner to work a lode, assemble; they decide on the number of shares into which their capitalis to be divided, and the number to be allotted to each; they appoint an agent, commonly called a purser, for the purpose of managing the affairs of the mine, and enter in a book, called the cost book, the minutes of their proceedings, which are signed by all present. A license to try for ores, for twelve months, or some short period, is then obtained; followed, if the search be promising, by a set, that is, a lease of the minerals, or a license to ding, or both, granted by the landowner to the purser, or to one or two of the adventures, without any declaration of trust on their part for the rest, or for any other person, for a term of years, commonly twenty-one, but with a stipulation for the annual payment to the landowner of some portion of the ore raised.

The cost-book contains the names of all the shareholders, and the number of shares held by each is set opposite to his name. In a cost-book partnership, a shareholder may get id of his shares, and with them his liabilities, so far as his partners are concerned, without their consent, either by transfer or simple relinquishment, provided the cost book regulations do not prohibit such a course; in the former case the fact of transfer being entered by the purser in the cost-book, and in the latter notice being given to the purser of his having so relinquished his shares, and all his claims upon the mine.

Although there are several theories of the cost-book principle of working mines, the meaning of which the Courts are not bound to take judicial notice of (Re Gt. Cambrian, Hawkins' case, (1856) 2 K. & J. 253), yet it appears clear that, whatever maybe the rules and regulations between the adventures them-selves, each shareholder is liable to be sued by a creditor who has furnished the mine with necessaries for its due working, ordered according to the customary course in such concerns, and this whether the creditor knew at the time of crediting the mine that he was a shareholder or not.

See MacSwinney on Mines.