42 NEW YORK STATE MUSEUM 



The labor eniiployed in the mines is mainly Italian. Drilling is 

 done with hand auger drills, and blasting with dynamite. The 

 workings extend about ^. mile in a southw^est direction and are 

 based on a room-and-pillar method. The mine at present is liighted 

 only by torches, but the management is considering the installation 

 of electric haulage and lights. The rock is loaded on wooden mine 

 cars and hau*led by mules to the surface and then across the road 

 over a trestle to the mill. At the mill the rock is crushed with a 

 jaw crusher and then by one of the usual nippers. It tthen passes 

 into a rotary drying cylinder, is dried and then ground in a Uni- 

 versal pulverizer, a unique method in New York gypsum mills. 

 After grinding, the dust is collected by a fan which saves screening 

 the whole product. The remainder is screened on inclined . shaking 

 screens. The ground material is then calcined at a temperature of 

 280° to 350° in three ii-ton kettles with solid bottoms. Material 

 calcined at this temperature is said to be " first settling " and is 

 '' greasier and smoother " than that calcined at a higher tempera- 

 ture. Some of the material is calcined at 450° or seeond settling, 

 and is then sold to the Pittsburg Plate Glass Co. for bedding plate 

 glass. The mixing rooim is equipped with two 5-compartment 

 Broughton mixers; two T2-tube bagging machines and a fiber shred- 

 der of the type in which the log of wood is pivoted and the knives 

 revolve against it. This machine is capable of grinding 2500 pounds 

 per day. The fiber is blown by a blast of air intO' the bins, the 

 aeration also separating the dust from the fibers and loosening the 

 mass. The wood used is mainly willow and basswood. Some of 

 the crude rock is shipped directly, being dumped from the mine 

 cars on the trestle into the gondolas below ; a switch rums directly 

 under the trestle, from the Buffalo, Rochester & Pittsburg Rail- 

 road. This plant is superintended by Mr G. J. McEntyre. 



Garbutt Gypsum Co. This company, one of the oldest in the 

 district, has a mill west of the Empire mill on the west side of the 

 roiad, and on the north bank of the creek. The mines are located 

 about a mile southeast of the mill, on the top of the south bank of 

 the creek, and are reached from the mill by the roads to the 

 south and west. In former days entrance was had to the gypsum 

 bed by a tunnel driven into the north face of the hill, but this 

 has been abandoned and at present the bed is reached by two 

 small shafts. One of these was sunk four years agO' to a depth 

 of 70 feet, and the other, 100 feet to the west, was sunk in October 

 1908 to the depth of 68 feet. The covering consists of 40 feet of 

 soil and 22 feet of limestone, the gypsum layer being from 5 to 



