78 MASSACHUSETTS AGRICULTURE. 



railroad was extended, and from which the stone for the first 

 forty feet of the monument was taken. This quarry is now 

 owned by the Granite Railway Company, which is still exten- 

 sively engaged in quarrying and dressing stone. No less than 

 eight other companies arc now similarly engaged in this town. 

 They give employment to six hundred men, in quarrying, 

 hammering, <tc., whose average wages are -$500 a year — making 

 an aggregate annual disbursement of i'SOOjOOO. Probably the 

 sum which has been paid for labor at the quarries during the 

 last ten years, has not been less than 83,000,000. If this 

 amount had been obtained for gold or silver, it would have 

 produced an excitement in the country. The supply of stone 

 is apparently inexhaustible. It is valued in the quarry at one 

 cent per cubic foot. When the Granite Railway Company 

 purcliased their land here, they paid about 840 an acre for the 

 greater part; but for the quarry proper, they paid 81,000 an 

 acre. Tlie deeper the quarry is worked, the better is the 

 quality of the stone. 



Among the noted buildings which have been built of the 

 Quincy granite, are the Custom House, Merchants' Exchange, 

 and Court House, Boston ; Custom Houses of New Orleans, 

 Mobile, Providence and Portland. Exchange, and Astor House, 

 New York. The celebrated Fort Sumter, in Charleston harbor, 

 was also built of this stone. The noble rows of stores on 

 Commercial Street, Franklin Street, and in other parts of 

 Boston, built of this material, attract the attention of every 

 visitor to the city, and are acknowledged to be unsurpassed in 

 appearance in this or any other country. Some trials which 

 have lately been made in sculpturing the Quincy granite, 

 show that it is susceptible of being worked with good effect. 

 Monuments of ornamental character have been wrought from 

 it, and the success which has attended the attempts to use it 

 for such purposes has been such, that arrangements have been 

 made to carry on this branch to considerable extent. 



The Granite Railway Company employ five or six yoke of 

 oxen in work about the quarries. They are of the largest size 

 that can be obtained, though it is necessary that they should 

 unite a good degree of activity and energy with great strength. 

 We have never seen finer oxen of tliis class, than several 

 of those shown us by Mr. Penniman. They cost 8150 to 



