Thomas County cat. [volume] (Colby, Kan.) 1885-1891, 1886-03-25
PICKING SCRAP IRON.
dow . Man Got All the Profit Out q .
Huge Cinder Heap.

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Hugo Cinder Heap.
Many years ago the Lackawanna
Iron and Coal Company began to dump
the cinders and other refuse from its
steel mill on piece of low land short
distance south of the main business
part of Scranton. The refuse was at
tirst emptied out of the cars from the
summit of the ridge, and as the heap
grew the tracks were moved to the
edge of the deposit, the top of which
was constantly kept level. In the
course of few years the refuse COW
cred several acres, and was from
twenty-five to thirty-five feet deep.
There was. nevertheless, scrap iron
and steel in the huge pile. but it was
not thought to be worth much, and the
managers of the company were glad to
get rid of it at the lowest possible cost
and in the easiest and quickest way.
The area covered by the refuse was
called made land" and it was the in
tention of the company to utilize it for
building lots some time in the distant
future. About this time man named
Lloyd came to Scranton from the
lower part of the State. He sought out
the general manager of the company.
and told him that man could make
good wages picking scrap iron around
the edges of the dump. He brought
the interview to close by saying to the
manager:
"Will you give me five dollars ton
for all the iron l can gather around
there?''
mo. SIR replied the manager.
"Will you give me four?"
"No, sir.
"Will You give me threeP"
"Will you give me two and a half?"
Eyes"
SO Lloyd went to work picking up
scrap iron and piling it in heaps along
the foot of the dump, and at the end of
the msnth he had enough picked up to
bring linn one hundred dollars. Lloyd
made a little more than that amount
this second month without working at
all hard. He was a cautious person,
and he was afraid that the company
would cancel the contract if its mana
ger found that he was getting rich too
fast, and SO he took it easy for some
time. He ransacked the sloping side
of the dump pretty thoroughly
each month, and as fast as the cars
We're tipped up and emptied of their
contents he took good care to rake out
all the small pieces of iron before other
car loads of refuse slid down the slope
and covered them up.
Every thing went along nicely for
eight or ten months, and Lloyd was
doing so well that he neglected to be as
cautious as he had formerly been. One
would nave said that there was big
bonanza for him in the thousands of
tons of refuse in the heap. At any
rate he thought that he might as well
work it little livelier than he had
done. He cleared three hundred dol
lars one month, and that was the last
of his contract The manager told
him that he couldn't rake and scrape
around the heap any more, and that
the company would do its own raking
and scraping.
Then one of the companv's foremen.
who had told the general manager that
there were mines of wealth in the Gin
der dump. made preparations to dig
into the mammoth heap and sift the
iron out of every square foot of it. He
got machinery in place, so as to save
as much labor as possible. and began
to mine into the bowels of the artificial
hill at one particular point. The crust
panned out satisfactorily, but the in
tOrior of the heap was found to have
been on fire for many years. The iron
had become Oxidized by the heap and
was utterly worthless. and the project
of searching for untold thousands was
at once abandoned. 1t was learned
afterward that Lloyd. who had reaped
harvest off the dump, was an old
hand at the business, and that he |
chuckled to himself when he learned |
that the foreman was preparing to
search for thousands of tons of iron in |
the bowels of the MISREPRESENTATION (Pd.)
Cor. ~ y. Times |