It is due to initial stocks. Trust me, factions rarely ever craft them. They just loot them so initial stocks remain somehow in the map, but not for long.
And there are often muskets from initial stocks because the maps have been crashing more than once a day.
Time for crafting should be vastly reduced. It is a true pain in the ass to make them. The reward doesn't encourage me much either, since as we have said keeping gold on you is very dumb.
Also, no one bothers to mine. Not sufficiently high price to compensate for the fact that wood is much closer and faster to gather.
In addition, you have to understand that high rewards are not that valuable as it stands, again due to high gold drops. It is better to cut some wood, it completely dominates getting iron. Hence the 0 iron stocks. Only now and then someone does it out of altruism, but it is clearly not in his own interest to mine.