The daily morning journal and courier., 1903-12-19

porting the products-fne and rough sand and gravel-to the barges anchor ed by the pier.
 Sometimes this is done by carts. Again toy locomotives and cars puff from screen to washer and steam shoy- els for freight and then pull out over the barges and are free of their bur- den. But one firm has gone step fur
 ther-it hauls it's sand by trolley and in this way loads between ten and twelve barges day.
 This is by far the largest sand bank on Long Island, and one of the biggest in America. The bank consists of near ly 800 acres, bought at a price varying from s1,00O to s1,5OO an acre.
 At this plant the sand is not only screened and washed free of loam and other foreign substances-it is also
 dried. An endless belt carries a steady stream of sand high over the shore road into one of the buildings out over the
 water and on to a red hot metal sur face. which evaporates the moisture in the very few seconds it takes the sand
 to travel over it and fall down hopper into a canal boat.
 Then, when the boat is filled, the
 matches are battened down and five
 hours later the sand is delivered per- fectly dry at the wharf of the New
 York consignee.
 An innovation at another sand bank is a centrifugal machine that blows up tons of sand in a day into screens and the washer, and does away with great portion of the hand labor necessarily required where even steam shovels and steam railroads and trolley systems are employed.
 At the average Hampstead harbor
 sand bank forty men find work, and at least one bank has a payroll that con- tains over three hundred names. Hard ly any of the employees of the sand banks are native Long Islanders. From the beginning, despite offers of good pay, they have steadfastly refused to work in them. ...-..-..., The foremen are usually Swedes and l the men under them always Italians. They find pretty steady employment all the year around. Bad weather and hol- idays cause the only Interruptions. Building strikes have no terrors for them or their employers, for if the sand is not wanted for consumption in the l nearest market-New York and the suburbs-it finds ready sale in Phila- delphia. Boston and other eastern l cities. As a result the amount of sand taken out of pit in a year is staggering. l ho arro aail pI1f nf c 1NlS employing forty men is 1000 or 1,50o
 tons. That means a yearly output of our friends that in the south various 300,000 tons of sand: And as 1,500 tons yields a profit of $100 a bank produc- ing that amount daily clears to it's own
 CTS something like $S0,O0O a year on 45O,- 900 tons
 According to the sand bank owner
 who furnished these figures, 16,000 tons
 of Hampstead harbor sand is marketed
 in New York nearly every working day by a dozen or so sand banks. Roughly estimated that gives 4,S00,000 tons d
 year, the net profit on which reaches
 close to $400,000. .-.5.-,... No wonder that the Long Islander,
 as he stands on the hill at the head of
 Hempstead harbor and beholds the
 sand banks on both sides and the piers
 leading from them to deep water, ex-
 claims: ..,. .-
 "A good sand bank for mine, and let
 who will take the gold mines"
 It is estimated that the Hampstead
 harbor sand banks have netted their
 owners approximately $3,000,000 in the
 last six years.-New York Sun.