The work in China was at first rather simple. Mines, of course, there were and had been for uncounted centuries. But what was needed by the new Department was some sort of survey of the mineral resources and mining possibilities of the Empire, and a tentative framing of a code of mining laws, so that the new development of the mines of the country which Chang hoped to initiate could be carried on to best advantage, and in such a way that private enterprise could participate in it. For centuries the mines had been Crown property and the ruler had simply let them out directly, or through the viceroys, for either a stipulated annual rental or for as much "squeeze" as could be wrung from the lessees in any of several various ways. And there had to be some rental or "squeeze" for each of the many officials that could get within arm's length of the mining business. The tenure of the use of the mines by the lessees was usually simply the period of the continued satisfaction of the lessor. All this had not made for any extensive new opening up of the country's mineral resources, or for the scientific development of the mines already long known. One could not afford to put much capital into prospecting or into modernizing the mining methods when each improvement simply meant either more rent or "squeeze," or the giving up of the mine. So the ores were mined and the metals extracted from them by the miners according to the methods of their ancestors as far back as history or tradition went, and it was all done under a set of mining laws as primitive as the mining methods themselves. There were enormous possibilities of improvement. It would have been hard for any mining engineer to do anything at all to the situation without improving it. For Hoover, with his technical education in metallurgical processes, his experience in handling various and difficult mining situations, and his genius for organizing and systematizing, the opportunity was simply unique. He plunged into the work of examining and planning and codifying with the zest of a naturalist in an unexplored jungle. In the day time he made his examination; at nights he studied the mining laws of all time and all the world. He built up a staff as rapidly as it could be put together and correlated with the tasks before it. He had sent in advance for two or three men he had worked with in America and for some of his most able and dependable associates in West Australia, including Agnew, a mill expert, and Newbery, a metallurgist, son of a famous geologist, both of them devoted to "the Chief." That was Hoover's _sobriquet_ among his early mining associates; just as it was later among the members of his successive great war-time organizations. He has just naturally--not artificially--always been "the Chief" among his co-workers and associates.