Daily globe. [volume] (St. Paul, Minn.) 1878-1884, 1883-11-18
GOLD AND SILVER DUST.
Bits of Wooden Floor Sweepings
Yielding Upward of Two
Thousand Dollars.
PHILADELPHIA News.1

! There are houses in this city, plain looking
| from without, but with roofs incrusted with
| precious metals and floors studded with tbits
| OF silver, gold and diamonds. There are cob
webs hanging from the ceilings; but they are
| sprinkled like the spangled lace of an oriental
bride. The men and women in the house
are Ill dressed and grimy; but their fingers
are tipped with gold, and their hsir is busted
with glittering ores. With all their riches
however, such houses are only greasy shops,
with rickety, dark stairways. A reporter of
The News climbed three flights in one He
| entered room whence he might have been
sent away well-off for life; but all he received
was choking Whit of sulphuric acid or
some other acid, and all he saw and felt was
furnace which number of workmen were
supplying with bits of an old floor. The ashes
were being scraped into barrels.
Making pulverized charcoal for bilious
peoples? asked the reporter.
'No, sir; just burning some precious wood, !"
was the answer. s'You see, when we moved
from our old quarters in the Peterson build
ing we brought the old floor with US and left
new one. expect these bits of firewood to
yield usupward of s., COO The floor has been
in use about ten years, and, grain by grain,
it has been fled with costly metals This
charcoal will be ground in mill, and thence
will go into crucible for amalgamation with
mercury. By squeezing out the mercury
| through chamois skins we will regain the gold
| and silver that has been ground into the floor
| by hundreds of feet
what becomes of the metal dust that is
swept up?n
''We treat it in n similar way Our en-
| ployes are required to wash their hands in
| tank, and the dirty water passes through
! series of sieves before reaching the waste
| pipe, SO that very little of value is allowed to
| escape. A Newark firm uses no less than five
tanks for its refuse water before it passes into
well. A few years ago the firm took out
the mud from the bottom of the WELL worked
it, and obtained several hundred dollars of
| metal. The sweepings and settings of shop
like ours are worth from So, 600 to $1,000 ac-
cording to the kind of work DONE If we get
up many diamond settings and plain rings
the waste is large. In chain-making and
| watch-case work the loss is not so greasn
F'What is the value of foor.n
"That is hard to estimate. Dorison & Age,
of Newark, burnt a floor 50x100 and obtained
return of s., 900. A jewe1ry establishment
| on SAMSON street obtained $500 for one re-
Gently burnt
Cannot the workmen carry away the gold
| dust without detectionE'
81 have heard of such things We had a
| man in our employ who had curly hair and
was continually running his fingers through
it On inquiry found he had been dis
charged from a New York factory for carry
ing gold away in his hair, which was after
ward redeemed by a ffne-tooth comb in the
way many mother redeems her boys scalp"
At this juncture another lot of the precious
kindling was put in the furnace. The scribe
busted off his notebook, shook the lapel of
his coat, looked honest, held up his hands and
had his finger-nails inspected, and left as poor
as he came.
1--WE do not reduce our sweepings," said
another jeweler. 'sWe take our sweepings,
| burn them and pulverize them and send out
sample packages to the assayer. The value
OF sweepings yearly l should estimate at over
| $4,000
At the United States mint, where more
| gold is used than in any other manufactur-
| ing place in the country, the devices used to
recover vagrant particles of gold and silver
are both novel and interesting. Chief Clerk
L. r. Copperwaithe said: 1.-The value of
| our sweepings for the fiscal year ending June
30, was Sl4, 204. 40 gold and $500 IL for sill
yer. We are very careful to reclaim all the
gold we can. Nearly every month we have
the roofs of all our buildings swept and the
| sweepings refined
'Does that pay you to sweep the roofss'
''Pay u.s. The sweepings for one month
! amounted to $500. We occasionally SWEEP
| the roof of the Presbyterian church You
wouldn't expect to find gold in d sewer.
would you? Well, we scraped about sixty
feet of the street sewer, and, apart from the
- e
| gold and silver that had washed from the
roof of the building during heavy showersP
GLOW often doyou scrape the sewer?n
"Well, we shall scrape again SOON But
after that there well be no need. We are hav-
ing well dug to catch our rain-water in the
future. We had a surplus last year of TWEEN
ty-one ounces of gold over the amount
| allowed for waste"
How do you guard against your workuen
| carrying gold awaJ!'
here, and they are washed from time to
time
What becomes Of the gold that escapes
through the chimnsys.
Every time a crucible is open a certain
amount of gold is bound to volatilize but it
drops on the roof and in the street. Occasion
| ally a crucible upsets, and that causes consid-
cradle volatiliZation. We had felt roof on
one of our sheds that was taken off and re-
duced, yielding large amount of gold and
silver. The old Pennsylvania depot, before
| Mr.. Wanamaker bought it, had a felt and
gravel roof, which for years had been absorb
ing gold that is, no doubt, in some city
dump"
"How valuable do you think the roof
wasp
Judging by the roof taken off The mint
yard, l should say at least 81 per foot. So,
you see, Uncle Sam has many thousands in