Evening star. [volume] (Washington, D.C.) 1854-1972, 1903-11-14
SEA SAND MILLIONS
Money in the Dunes Along
Long Islands Shore.
PROFITABLE INDUSTRY
HAND LABOR REPLACED BY
. STEAM MACHINERY.
A Typical Plant-Looks Like the Ex-
terror Works of a Coal
Mine.
PROFITABLE INDUSTRY

Written for The Evening Star by Thomas G. Clay
"a good sand bank for mine said the
Long Islander, as he looked down into the
1O0-foot pit, where a score of men were
shovelng the golden earth into carts, land
the dickens take the gold mines"
Long islanders who live along the sound
have been firm in the belief that a sand
bank beats color" as a money maker
ever since a shrewd Quaker restored the
fortunes of his family by digging up the
dune on the seafront of his farm, loading
i. on barges and sending it to New York.
to be used for building purposes. That
was the inception of a systematic sea
sand industry that has brought riches to
hundreds of men and especially to the
numerous descendants of many of the first
white owners of the land. 1t was likewise
the opening up of Americas biggest sand
field, and the beginning of the end of the
effort to supply New Yorks demand for
sand by digging 1T up along the beaches
around Coney Island and in upper New
Jersey.
The original settlers on Manhasset Neck
where sea sand fortunes were first made
and around Hampstead harbor, where nu-
merous sand banks are now being worked
with as much method as is gold mine
and which have netted their owners APP
proximately 100000 within the last six
years. were Quakers. The Quakers in
variably portion their property equally
among their children. Vast farming tracts
had thus become divided into small farms
or mere garden patches fifteen years ago,
and many an owner of few acres or land
was having hard time making living;
Among the number was the man who
started the sand industry. He mad 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 MIN ana ms suppieo
with the necessities.
He Had the Sand.
In the midst of his anxiety over his chill
dren's future he thought of the sand hill
at the sea end of his property. Then 1t oc-
curred to him that sand is used for building
purposes 1.-The very thing" he said. III
get that sand to New York somehow ana
the money that it brings shall educate my
children
1t did more 1t made the man wealthy;
he left will that gave to each of his off
spring an inheritance worth not a few thou
sands of dollars.
The sand-bank region is full of similar
cases. There is a story of the manufac-
turer who failed and had left only his an
cestors' farm, the pride of his heart, and
that was heavily mortgaged and IN danger
of being taken from him. He pocketed his
pride 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 81 600 an acre and small but profitable
share in the business. For farming pur-
poses the land was hardly worth $50 an
acre Now the man has paid off all his old
Indebtedness and Is rapidly accommodating
another fortune, although it has been only
four years since he met financial disaster
This mans rise and that of many others
to wealth through sand are invariably 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 turkey. Now