The daily morning journal and courier., 1903-12-19
FORTUNES FROM SAND BANKS
BETTER RTHANGoLD MINES, LONG
 ISLANDERS SAK.

Those in HsmPstsad HnrboF Estimated
 to Have Melted Their Owners Three
 million Dollars in ths Last six Years
 sserile Farms Made to Yield Big Fora
 tunes.
 "A good sand bank for mine," said the Long Islander. as he looked down into the 100-foot pit, where a score of men were shoveIling sand into carts, and let who will take the gold mines"
 Long Islanders who live along the sound have been firm in the belief that a sand bank beats gold mine as a money maker ever since a shrewd Quaker restored the fortunes of his family by digging up the sand on his farm, loading it on barges and sending it to New York to be used for building purposes. s.....". ......-
 That was the beginning of system atic sea sand industry that has brought riches to hundreds of men, and espe- cially to the descendants of many of the first white owners of the land. It was likewise the opening up of Amer ica's biggest sand field and the begin ming of the end of the effort to supply New York's demand for sand by dig ging it up along the beaches around Coney Island and in upper New Jer- sey. :.s..- ...
 Quakers were the first settlers on Manhassett Neck, where sea sand for tunes were first made, and around Hampstead harbor, where sand banks are now being worked with as much method as gold mine. They usually divided their property equally among their children. Great farming tracts had thus become divided into small farms or mere garden patches fifteen years ago. and many an owner of few acres of land was having hard time making a living. ss 2z s.... ....
 Among the number was the man who started the sand industry. He had a large family, two of the children were all but ready to go to college and he had not the money to send them; his farm furnished just enough to keep him and his supplied with the neces- saries. At
 Tn the midst of his anxiety over his childreRs future he thought of the sand hill at the sea end of his property. Then it occurred to him that sand is used for building purposes. s
 The very thing," he said. "I'll get that sand to New York somehow and tie money that it brings shall educate Ny children z
 It did more. It made the man wealthy. He left will that gave to each of his offspring an inheritance worth not a few thousands of dollars.
 The sand bank region is full of simi- lar cases. There is the story of the manufacturer who failed and had left only his ancestors farm, and that was heavily mortgaged and in danger of being taken from him.
 He sought out the two men who had been trying to buy the sea end of the farm for a sand bank and sold them fifty acres foR $1, GOO an acre and a small but profitable share in the business. For farming purposes the land was hardly worth $3O an acre. Nov the man has paid off all his old indebted ness and is rapidly accumulating an- other fortune, although it has been only four years since he met financial disas- ter.
 This mans rise and that of many others to wealth through sand are in variabIy told to the. visitor in such towns as Roslyn and Port Washington in this fashion:
 See that man over there? Four years ago he was as poor as Jobs tur- key. Now he owns that big place yon- der and big heaps besides. Sand did 1t all.
 Morning, Mir. Hicks. He's another one of 'em. Turned his farm into a sand pit and tells me that he and the men who are in with him are making $100 a day clear money. 'Tisnt so long ago since he was wondering where his next dollar would come from"
 And so it goes, until the visitor won- ders how any one in the sand bank country has escaped making his pile out of sand But not Q few who could have refrained from doing so. Tn the lan- guage of the Swedish foreman of one of the sand banks:
 Its their funny ideas about ances- tors that keeps them poor"
 There's many an old Long Island family that will not sell it's ancestral home for love or money, no matter how much it needs the latter, and that looks askance upon the neighbor who will permit such dissertation for material gain It was this attitude on the part of land owners that six years ago caus- ed the sand industry to shift from Manhassett Neck Hampstead harbor.
 This shift gave rise to a systematic and scientific sand industry. The banks on Manhasset were worked in a prinl- itive way. The sand, with no attempt to separate it from gravel and loam and other extraneous substances, was tow ed to New York, where it found a ready market, and later on was screened by hand. %sH 2
 The sand is still lowed to the metrop- olis-160 900 tons of it daily-but that is the only part of the old method that still generally obtains. A few spades and carts are no longer all that is nec- essary to get out the sand. Their place has been taken by mechanical plant that represents an investment of thou sands of dollars.
 This radical change was caused by one sand bank owner believing that he could get the better portion of the sand trade by sending his sand to market all ready for use. And by this scheme he
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