The daily morning journal and courier., 1906-07-30
TIFF" MINERS OF MISSOURI.
Sections of Washington County Cop.
 hered With "Tiff1 Holes.

chemists say that they are mining barytes, but, lacally, says the St. Louis Globe-Democrat, they are known as tiff" miners.
 Washington county is honeycombed with tiff holes, three or four feet apart, with a rim of red earth thrown up around them and the grass and weeds struggling to grow from the upturned clay. The miners call it gophering. for tiff mine field Is like a gopher village or prarie dog town on a larger scale.
 With pick and spade the miner digs a round hole three feet in diameter.
 He sometimes strikes tiff at the grass roots, and at times he sees it stick ing out of the ground. In other places he must go down a few feet, but near ly ways the tiff nodules or nuggests are found within three or four feet of the surface.
 The miner rigs up a rude windlass, with rope and bucket, and by the time he is down deep enough to require the use of the windlass he has struck pay dirt.
 Usually the tiff miner begins to drift" about six feet from the surface He uses no. stays to hold up the earth, 1t being cheaper to sink another hole q few feet away, if the tiff holds out well in any dlrection-as 1t usually does.
 After digging in a circle three or four feet beyond the walls of his shaft, until the hole resembles in shape a squat vase with an elongated neck, the miner starts another hole half a doz- en feet away and repeats the process. Sometimes he digs a short tunnel con- meeting his shafts,
 Hundreds of acres in a tract have been gophered out in this way, and after a field has been practically aban- doned for many years an industrious miner, with his family, will go in and sink holes in the unnined spots with profitable results.
 The tiff occurs in the clay, not in lodges. It comes in loose nuggets from the size of an egg to that of a bushel measure. Tiff is a white substance, easily breakable, about two-thirds the weight of lead.
 In Washington county it is frequently oolored with iron scale or rust on the exterior and sometimes carries chunks of iron ore or Galena lead. These must be clipped off before shipping. The lead, which is, highly valuable, is put aside in a pile and sold to the general stores in the neighborhood, which will buy anything from a peck of potatoes to a pound of lead ore.
 Women do, a large part of the tiff cleaning. They use what is called a tiff hatchet, or pick-a-wee, a short handled, double bitter, narrow axe with hardened steelpoints. After the man down in the hole windlasses up a bucket of tiff, his wife sits down on the ground beside the ore heap and cleans the nuggets one by one, chipping off the lead ore and scraping the clay from the wrinkled surface of the nugget
 When the ore first comes out 1t looks like big Jumps of red clay. After Mrs Miner and her brood of little ones have cleaned the tiff and tossed it into a new pile the heap gleams white in the sunshine. It Is the nready for mar ket.
 All week the mining family dig and clean, and every Saturday afternoon the tiff wagons haul the weeks output to the railroad station for shipment The tiff is weighed at the mines and the miner receives his pay in cash. The price paid is from $210 tos$2.75 per ton for cleaned No l ore, with lesser pay for lower grades. The owner of the land receives a royalty of from 25 to 50 cents per ton.
 In the fields around Potosi a miner, with assistance from his family for the cleaning process, can average a ton a day in fairly good ground, At some of the mines the looser dirt is separated from the ore by means of a contrivance called a rattle box, often operated by women.
 Tiff miners in Washington county are mostly of French descent, from the original settlers of the county who began digging lead there nearly 200 years ago. Long ago the surface lead, in paying quantities, was taken out, and then it was discovered that the abundant tiff was a comercial asset, and tiff mining took the place of goph- ering for lead,
 There is also in the Potosi district a class of negroes who follow tiff mining. They are called tiff niggers. A tiff nig- ger is perhaps the happiest person on earth. He is thoroughly independent. He is privileged to go anywhere and dig tiff, by paying out of his weekly clean- up the small royalty exacted by the owner of the land He is his own em- ployer, working when he feels like it and fishing or loafing when he is so in- clined.
 The supposed use of barytes as a food adulterant is an old story. but this use is strenuously denied in many quart CTS. Barytes is chiefly used as a white pigment in the manufacture of paint When mixed with other pigments, such as white lead and white zinc, it pro- duces a very durable paint, the barytes being absolutely inert and not affect ed by acids or gases of any kind.