The Oskaloosa herald. (Oskaloosa, Mahaska County, Iowa) 1885-1919, 1903-02-12
IN THE LAND OF zinc.
VIM. Crosson Writes of His Trip to
Galena, Kansas.
Galena, Kansas, Feb. 8, 1903


write about my trip for your paper.
We left Oskaloosa the evening of the
Goth. The first night we had crowd
ed train and 1t was crowded until we
arrived at Kansas City about 80 in
the morning. At Kansas City we took
the NJ. X. & r. and went about $50
miles through Kansas, all of which
was a beautiful farm country and ar
rived at arsons, town of about TO-
900 inhabitants. The depot at this
place was a large modern structure
with all modern improvements. At
this place we took the train for Ga
lena which is about 40 miles from
Parsons. Arrived at Galena about
$3.50 in the evening.
The morning after our arrival | took
a stroll around Galena and saw hun
dreds of holes in the ground and also
many shafts that were being worked.
They raise the ore in small like tubs
with steam holster; at some of the
smaller places they life the ore with
horse "histers." l was surprised to
see the piles of rocks taken from the
ground. I also visited the smelter and
here lour men were engaged at hot
furnace shoveling in the ore. The
lead comes out on the other side in
cast molds making pigs about 80
pounds.
The next day we took a trip to Jop-
lin, a city of $4,000 inhabitants. 1t
is a city with all modern improvements
surrounded by the same mining indus
try, with hundreds of , mills called
crushers in operation. Joplin is said
to have one Of the largest white lead
smelters in the world. We drove over
the city and there are a great many
fine residences. The buildings in this
city are from three to six stories high.
1t is said that there is over one mil.
lion dollars worth of improvements to
be made in this city this year. Among
the improvements will be a stone ho-
tel that will cover over half of block
and it will be five or six stories high.
The government is expanding, aside
from the million dollars worth of i'm
provements, 100000 in government
buildings.
Carthage, Webb City, Joplin and
Galena are all connected by an cleo
trio street railway.
The output of zinc and lead as
shown by statistics is a little less than
a million dollars a month.
The farming land around these
cities lays rolling and raises splendid
wheat, oats and all kinds of vegetables
and pretty good corn. 1t also raises
apples and all kinds of small fruit.
Since we have been here the wea-
Their has been like April and like Ine
climate very much. The farmers are
blowing for corn already. The roads
through the country are all macadamiz-
ed with crushed rocks, called tailings.
Tailings is the waste from the zinc
ore after it has been cleaned and some
piles of taoinngs contain three hun
bred thousand tons.
The greatest curiosity with me was
seeing the hard fiinty rocks taken
from the mines and put into hopper,
called a crusher which consists of one
front jaw bumper, one eccentric bump
er, one movable jaw, one stationary
jaw, one eccentric shaft with driving
pulley, one back plate, wedge block,
togle block, two side or hand plates,
one jaw humber shaft and cap for &C.
centric shaft, box togle, plate and
togle box, wedge block bolt and jaw
bolt and a cap for jaw bumper shaft.
After it goes through the crusher 1t
goes to the rolls which consists Of two
large shells weighing about 1850
pounds. 1t goes from the rolls to an
elevator screen and the fine dirt is
then run from the screen to the rough
er and he coarse dirt to another set
o. rolls and from there to another ele-
vator and to what is called cleaning
jig. From this the rock goes to the
failing elevator and is then run
through trough to the dump pile. 1t
requires five inch stream of water
running on the jigs to separate the
zinc from the rocks.
A. B. Crosson is working for large
foundry and does the collecting and
selling and Las his Office in Joplin.
Yours respectfully,
VIM. Crosson.
P. S. They are having protracted
meeting here in the Methodist church.
Rev. Otto, the preacher, is an Iowa
man. Both he and his wife are gradu-
ates of the Mt. Pleasant college. He
is a fearless preacher and breaches
the whole gospel, the result of which
is Sc conversions and the work is still
going on. VIM. G.
Better Than Gold.