The sun. [volume] (Morris, Stevens County, Minn.) 1882-1895, 1883-12-06
Geld and Silver Dust
philadelphia News.

EiiauclpIit NEWS.
There are houses in this city, piair
looking from without, but with roofs in
| trusted with precious metals, and q DOR.
studded with silver, gold and diamonds
There are cobwebs hanging from tn,
eillngs, but they are sprinkled like tn,
| spangled lace Of an oriental bride. Th,
| men and women in the house are il
iressed and grimv, but their fingers are
| tipped with gold, and their hair is dust
ed with glittering ores. With all theil
| richie however, such houses are onl,
greasy shops, with rickety, dark stair
ways. A reporter Of the News climbed
| three flight in one. He entered a room
whence be might hav. been sent away
we'll off for life; but all he received was
a choking Whit o suphuric acid or some
| other acid. and ali he saw and felt was a
| furnace which number of workmen
were supplying with pits of an old floor
The ashes were being scraped into bar
rels.
Making pulverised charcoal for bill
ious people?" asked the reporter.
mo, sir; just burning some precious
wood,' was the answer. "You see,
when we moved from our old Quartz re-
in the Peterson building we brought the
old floor with us and left a new one. /
expact these bits of firewood to yield us
upward OF $500. The floor has been in
use about ten years, and, grain by grain,
1t has been filed with costly metals This
charcoal will be ground in mill, and
thence Will 60 into acrucible for atnaIga-
nation 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 ip@'
we treat it in a similar way. Our
employees are required to wash their
hands in a tank, and the dirty water
passes through a series of sleeves 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 int
we'll. A few years ago the nrm took
out the mud from the pottom ofthe well.
worked it, and obtained several
hundred dollars Of metal. The sweep
ings and settiings of shop like ours are
to the kind of work done. If we get up
the waste is large. In chain making and
watch case work the loss is not so great.
what is the value of a f1oor?"
That is hard to estimate. Dorison &
Age Of Newark burnt floor 50x100 and
Obtained a return of 5000. A jewelry
Establishment on Sans ON street obtained
500 for Que recently burnt"
Cannot the workmen carry away the
gold dust with out detection?"
Il have heard of such things. We
had man in one employ who had cur.
w hair and was continually running his
fingers through it. On inquiry we found
ne had been discharged from a New
York factory for carrying gold away in
his hair, which was afterwards re.
deemed by fine tooth comb in way
many a mother redeems her boys
scalp"
At this juncture another lot of the pre-
cious kindling was put in the furnace.
The scribe busted off his note book,
shook the lapel of his coat, looked hon
est, held up his hands and had his fin
ger nails inspected, and left as poor as
te came.
eve do not reduce our sweepings,"
said another jeweler. ''We take our
5weepings, burn them and pulveriz.
them, and send out sample packages to
the assayer. The value of sweeping
yearly should estimate at over S4Do."
At the United States mint, wher,
more gold is used than in any Other
manufacturing place in the country, the
levices used to recover vagrant parti-
cles of gold and silver are both novel
perwaithe said: The value of our sweep
r,,oo FL bo f;Sool voor on1ipu limo
was l4,20440 gold, and $9,320.12 for sii
YER. We are very careful to reclaim al
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
roois?'
'Pav US! The sweepings for ons
month amounted $500. We occasional
sweep the root OF the Presbvteri
Church. You wouldn't expect to find
gold in a sewer, would you? Well. we
scraped about fifty feet of the street
sewer, and, apart from the rats we
caught, reclaimed $500 worth of gold and
silver that had been washed from the
roof of the building during heavy show
ers."
allow often do you scrape the sewer?''
"Well, we shall scrape again soon
But after that there will be no need
We are having well dug to catch oul
rain-water in the future. We had sur.
plus last year of 81 ouncrs of gold ove1
the amount allowed for waste"
How do you guard against your work.
meu carrying gold away?" -.
"The workmen leave their working
clothes here, and they are washed from
time to time"
"What becomes of the gold that es.
canes through the chimnevs?" -
EVERY time q crucIDle Is open Ger
tain amount of gold is bound to volatilize
but it drops on the roof and in the street
Occasionally crucible upsets, and that
causes considerable volatilization. We
had felt roof on one of our sheds that
was taken off and reduced, yielding q
large amornt of gold and silver. The
old Pennsylvania depot, before Mr.
Wanamaker bought it, had felt and
gravel roof, which for years had been
absorbing gold, that is, no doubt, in
some city dump"
s.How valuable do you think the roof
was?"
Judging by the roof taken of the
mint yard, 1 should say ct least 81 per
foot. So, you see, Uncle Sam has many
thousands in some ash heap around.
town."
j