Watertown republican. [volume] (Watertown, Wis.) 1860-1906, 1886-03-24
LLOYD WORKED 1T RIGHT.

He Got All the Profit There Was Out OF
the Oompany's Big Oinder Heap.
(Scranton, lPa) Letter in the New YORK sun. !
Many years ago the L.ackawan-
ma Iron and Coal Company began to
dump the cinders and other refuse
from it's steel mill on O. piece Of low
land a short distance south of the
main business part OF Scranton. The
refuse was at first emptied out OF the
cars from thesummit 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 covered several acres and was
from twenty five to thirty feet deep.
There was, nevertheless, scrap iron
and steel in the huge pile, but 1T was
not thought to be worth much, and
the managers of the company were
glad to get rid of it at the lowest pos
sible cost and in the easiest and
quickest way. The area covered by
the refuse was called ''made land, I"
and it was the intention OF the COM
pany to utilize it for building lots
sometime in the distant future.
About this time a man named Lloyd
came to Scranton from the lower part
of the state. He sought out the gen
eral manager ofthe company and told
him that a man could make good
wages picking up scrap iron around
the edges Of the dump. He brought
the interview to close by saying to
the manager:
"Will you give me SIS ton for all
the iron [ can gather around there? !"
"No, SIR" replied the manager.
"Will you give me four?"
"No, sir"
evil, you give me three?"
"No, sir"
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 first month he had enough
picked up to bring him 500. Lloyd
made a little more than that the
second month without working hard
at all. He was a cautious person and
he was afraid that the company would
cancel the contract if its manager
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 were tipped up
and emptied of their contents he took
good care to rake out all small pieces
of iron before other car loads of refuse
slid down the slope and covered them
up.
Everything went along nicely for
eight or ten months and Lloyd was
doing so we'll that he neglected to be
One would have said that there was q
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 a little heavier than he had
done. He cleared $500 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 it's own raking and scraping.
Then one of the company's foremen,
who had told the general manager
that there were mines of wealth in
the cinder 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 satisfac-
torily, but the interior of the heap was
found to have been on fire for many
years. The iron had become oxidized
by the heat and was utterly worthless,
and the project Of searching for untold
thousands was at once abandoned.
It was learned afterwards that Lloyd,
who had reaped harvest off the
dump, was an old hand at the bust
ness, and he had chuckled to himself
when he learned that the foreman was
preparing to search for thousands of
tons of iron in the bowels of the heap.