Part III. Quarry Economics 



CHAPTER VI 



POWER AND MACHINERY 



General Discussion. The quarry industry as carried on 

 in the Oolitic I'mestone belt of Southern Indiana offers a fertile 

 field for research long the lines of increased economy in produc- 

 tion. The first tendency of unthinking people is to feel that 

 whatever other of our natural resources need conserving, this is 

 surely not necessary in the case of building stone. The popular 

 belief is that building stone and building materials are unlimited 

 in amount or at least as abundant as the rocks of the earth's 

 crust. This is far from true because some rocks are totally unfit 

 for building materials, and many more, altho used in quantities, 

 are not ideal building stones. 



Altho the stone industry is one of the very oldest, in fact the 

 first industry mentioned in history, still its development has pro- 

 gressed more slowly than almost any other of our great industries, 

 and today it is carried on along much the same lines that have been 

 followed for decades. The early operators who began produc- 

 tion of building stone in this district introduced very wasteful 

 methods, feeling that the supply of first-grade stone was un- 

 limited. At that time the abundance of material; its cheapness, 

 and the narrow field of the output made it necessary to take 

 out only the best stone. There has been a tendency to retain 

 these methods to the present time, and it is only in the last few 

 years that a more careful study and a broader knowledge of 

 conditions has shown the fallacy of this practice. The amount 

 of first-grade buff stone in sight is very limited, and the produc- 

 tion of a sufficient quantity to meet the increasing demand for 

 this high-grade building stone is becoming a serious problem to 

 the quarry men and mill operators of the district. 



The problem of transporting the stone long distances has 

 always been a deterring factor in the broadening of the industry, 

 and has tended to confine the interest of the operators to a small 

 section of the country. 



As railroad transportation facilities in this country have in- 

 creased, the market for the output of Oolitic limestone has been 



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