The Abbeville press and banner. [volume] (Abbeville, S.C.) 1869-1924, 1883-10-31
NOVEL AND INTERESTING.
HOW FORTUNES ARE POUND IN
GOLD AND Silver sWEEP1HGH.
Bits of Wooden Floor Yielding Up.
ward Of Two Thousand DOIlafs.-
Valuable Metal Dust

SAS"
GOLD AHp s1LvER swEEP1Has.
Bits of Wooden Floor yielding Up
ward of Two Thousand Dollafs--
Valuable Metal Dust.
There are houses in this city, plain
looking from without, but with roofs IN
crusted with precious metals and floors
| studded with bits of silver, gold and
diamonds. There are cobwcbs hanging
from the ceiling; but they are %sprinklcd
like the spanglcd lace of an oriental
| bride. The men and women in the
houses are addressed and grimy; but
their fingers are tipped with gold, and
their hair is busted with glittering ores.
With all their riches, however, such
houses arc only greasy shops, with
rickctv, dark stairways. \ reporter OF
the News climbed three flights in one.
He entered a room whence he might have
been sent away wcll-off for life: but all
he received was a choking whiff of sui
phuric acid, or some other acid, and all
he saw and felt was a furnace which a
number of workmcn were supplying with
bits of an old floor. The ashes were
being scrapcd into barrels.
"Making pulvcrized charcoal for
bilious people ?" asked the reporter.
mo, sir; just burning some precious
wood" was the answer. "Iou sec,
when We moved from our old quarters IN
the Peterson building we brought the
old floor with us and left a new one. l
expect these bits of tircwood to yield us
inward of 81, 900. The floor has been
in use about ten years, and, grain by
grain, it has been filled with costly
metals. This charcoal will be ground in
a mill, and thence will 90 into a 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?'
1--WE treat it in a similar way. Our
employees are required to wash their
hands in Il tank, and the dirty water
passes through Il series of sleeves before
reaching the waste pipe, so that very lit
tie of value is allowed to escape. A
Newark firm uses no less than five
tanks for it's refuse water be-
fore it passes into a well. A few years
ago the firm took out the mud from the
bottom of the well, worked it, and OBJ
tanned several hundred dollars of metal.
The swecpings and settings Of a shop
like ours arc worth from So, 000t to S., 900,
according to the kind of work done. If
we get up many diamond settings and
plain rings the waste is large. In chain
making or Warehouses; work the loss IS
not SO great"
VIVA is the value of a foor?'
THAT is hard to estimate. Dorison
& Age, of Newark, burnt a floor 50x1O0,
and obtained a return of S., 900. Ajcw-
elry establishment on SAMSON street OBJ
tanned $500 for one recently burnt"
Cannot the workmen carry away the
gold dust without detection ?"
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 we found
he had been discharged from a New
York factory for carrying gold away in
his hair, which was aftcrward redeemed
bv a tine-tooth comb in the way many.
mother redccms her boys scalp"
eve do not reduce our swecpings,'
said another jewcler. eve take our
sweepings, burn them and pulverizc
them, and send out sample packages to
the assaycr. The value of sweeping
yearly I should estimate at over $4,000"
At the United States mint, where more
gold is used than in any other manufac-
turing place in the country, the devices
used to recover vagrant particles of gold
and silver are both novel and interesting.
Chief Clerk L. r. Coppcrwaithe said:
1.-THE value of our sweepings for the tis-
cal year ending June 80 was $14, 2O4.4O
gold and 80. $50 70 for silver. We arc
very careful to reclaim all the gold we
can. Nearly every month we have the
roofs Of all our buildings swept and the
swccpings refined"
"Docs that pay You to sweep the
~roofs?"
PAY us. The s~wcepings for one
month amount to $500. We occasionally
sweep the roof Of the Presbyterian
church. You wouldn't expect to find
gold in a sewer, would youI Well, we
scrapcd about sixty feet of the street
sewer, and, apart from the rats we caught,
reclaimed $500 worth of gold and silver
that had washed from the roof of the
building during heavy Showers
How often do you scrapc the sewer e
UWrlI We shall scrapc again soon.
But after that there will be no need. We
arc having n well dug to catch our rain
water in the future. We had a surplus
last year of twenty-one ounces of gold
over the amount allowed for waste"
GLOW do you guard against your
workmcn carrying gold awayT"
THE workmcn leave their working
clothes here, and they are washed from
time to time"
"What becomes of the gold THAI
escapes through the chimncys"
LIVERY time a cruciblc is open a GER
tain amount of gold is bound to volatil-
izc, but it drops on the roof and in the
streets. Occasionally a cruciblc upscts,
and that causes a considerable volatiliza-
ton. We had a felt roof on one of our
sheds that was taken off and reduced,
yielding a large amount of gold and
silver. The old Pennsylvania depot, be-
fore Mr.. Wanamaker bought it, had Il felt
and gravel roof, which for years had
been absorbing gold that is, no doubt, in
some city dump"
How valuable do YOU think the
roof was :"
"Judging by the roof taken off the
mint-yard, should say at least one dol
lar per foot. So, you see, Uncle Sam
has many thousands in some ash heap
around town."-Phihdelphia Ne"s.
Comparative Position OF tho United
Stntes.