Harrisburg telegraph. [volume] (Harrisburg, Pa.) 1879-1948, 1917-10-02
THE PEOPLES FORUM

trash and refuse may be the means
of saving the nation.
Perhaps you have never heard of
Ashland. Many good things lie hid
den from the public view. Ashland
is in Schuylkill county. 1t is the
former home of John Penn Brock,
the founder of the present anthracite
coal fields. John Penn Brock is
dead. Brock came to Ashland in the
early 40's and purchased from the
state mountains, hills and valleys.
1t cost him &c cents an acre-less
than the price of coal bucket full
of coal now. He leased to Tom
Bancroft portion of the land. Tom
Bancroft started in the mining busi-
ness, and the Bancroft washery Of
this article is the result.
Bancroft is dead for many years,
as are all the men who, in those days,
mined the coal. The public paid for
it once. Now they are paying again,
and higher price than Tom Ban
croft ever dreamed of.
The Bancroft washery is at the
southerly end of Ashland and is the
newest, latest and ultra-modern
washery of them all. Washeries are
something new, if a decade is new.
The Bancroft washery we'll illus
trates them all. In the good old
days, when one had only to scratch
the surface to find unlimited guam
titles of fuel, anything less in size
than egg coal was scorned of no
value but a loss and detriment to
the operator.
The Bancroft coal banks give a
fair illustration of the unlimited
quantities of good coal thrown away
and discarded. A quarter of a mile
long and 400 feet high! You may
think of the number of years it took
Tom Bancroft and his employees to
put that mountain of the then refuse
there-dig and blast it out of the
ground deep down in the mines, haul
it to the surface, separate 1t, and
haul it out on the same banks you
see.
Fortunes Taken From Waste
The same banks have paid to the
new operators within the last six
months, it is said, 100000. Think
of it, 100000 from o waste product
scorned ten years ago, and all in
six months and with about forty
employees. This single bank is good
for several years to come.
Hundreds and hundreds of these
some kind of banks follow one after
the other like a continuous chain
over the entire anthracite region. In
the widest days of the California
gold craze nothing was ever heard
of like this.
Let us give you some figures. They
are approximately correct. although
not absolutely, since the writer has
not access to the books of the COM
panies.
The Bancroft washery at Ashland
sends out, on an average, 22h bat
tleship cars a day. These cars rep
resent l. 100 tons a day. If we take
two-fifths of the 100 TONS or 440
tons. as pea coal, at the new estab-
lished price of the President, 1t
amounts to S1,760. This is only
taking two-fifths of the entire prod
uct. and ] am sure I Pm under the
actual figures. And then take an
other two-fifths of the 1.100 tons a
daY. or $40 tons, as the smaller sizes
under pea coal at $3.50 a ton and
y mates s1.292. Then If we take
only one-fifth of the output as chest
nut coal, the chestnut amounts to
81 ,056 a day. Thus you will find that
the Bancroft washery produces, IL
my figures are correct, $4,04S per
day.
Not bad for a trash bank, is It?
And new instalment has been
made in this washery by which the
company expects to catch enough
fine coal that Is really only n soft
muck. to pay the salaries of all the
employees of the entire plant.
ALFRED B. GARNER.