The Birmingham age-herald., 1924-09-21
MILLION YEARS . NEEDED TO MAKE ASBESTOS ROOF
Nature Began Process
 Long Before Any Life Existed On Earth

It required something like million years to make fire proof and durable soofing for your house, according to statements issued recently by author tties on the subject. The process be- gan, not in the factory, nor even in the mine from which the base mate rial-Asbestos-was taken. The mak- ing of asbestos roofing began in. that far-off age which spectacled scientific gentlemen tell us was known as the Paleozoic age, and the first artificer was old Mother Nature herself when she formed the strange asbestos rock in the earth.
 And after she had made this as bestos rock, nature left it alone a while. The years and the centuries and the milleniums passed, and the process of manufacture was not com pleted until this mechanical twentieth century, when miners at the asbestos mines of Johns Manville Inc. in Quebec. took out the silky flores, put them through the mill. and made them into the asbestos shingles or other style of roofing that is placed upon your house. Qualities For Roof
 The selection of a suitable roofing material is question which every builder, whether he puts up a busi- ness building. a residence or garage, must face. The roof, to give satisfac- tion, should definitely be three things fireproof, weatherproof and durable. In the case of residence roof there is an additional requisite namely, it must be attractive in appearance.
 It is only within the last 50 years that asbestos has become really known that is, known in a commercial sense. It is mineral that is older than life itself on earth. By it's very structure asbestos seems to upset the laws of nature; it is a rock as hard and dense as marble, yet having such fine silky fibres that they may be woven, carded and spun into fabrics like cotton or wool or flax. It is at once the softest and the most enduring of all sub stances. Pick a piece of carded asbes- tos up in your fingers and you can crush it to powder. Take that same asbestos had make it into any one of a thousand products for the use of mankind and all the wear and tear of the forces of nature-time, rain, hail, snow, fire-have no effect upon it.
 How Asbestos Is Quarried
 To get one ton of asbestos fibre of various grades it is necessary to blast, something like 15 tons of rock. Blast ing is the only method which will dis lodge the rock. Electric or compressed air drills are driven into the rock from s to 30 feet deep; the holes are filled with dynamite and the enormous chunks of rock are shot loose from the earth. Immediately after the blast, workmen dislodged by hand the finest of the long asbestos flores. The rest of the rock which has been loosened by the blast is loaded into cars by means of steam shovels and conveyed to the mill Here it is dumped into huge bins and from there it travels by gravity into immense crushers. After being thoroughly crushed and dried the rock is ready for further refinement which consists in separating the flores from the crushed rock by means of shaking screens and air auction.
 When the flores are finally loosened they are graded by special machinery into classes. according to the uses to which they are to be put. To illustrate: One grade is used for shingles and roofing; another for asbestos textiles; another for asbestos paper and mill board; another for asbestos pipe in- sulation; and still another for asbestos cement and so on down through seemingly interminable list-table GOV CTS, coasters. boiler plugs, laundry blankets, telephone blankets, flat iron holders, stove mats, theater curtains etc.
 But in no particular is asbestos so extensively employed as in the manu- fracture of roofing materials. Possessing as it does the indestructible qualities of rock, it can readily be seen that asbestos once placed upon house top, imparts to roof the same enduring qualities. The American public is real izing more and more the value of this material as a roofino