198 
ON DRUG GRINDING. 
gist of that day. He showed me the article ground, which was 
about the fineness of tolerable coarse common table salt, the cus- 
tom then being to pound it in mortars. He asked me if I could 
grind it, I told him I thought I could, much finer than the sample, 
and at a lower rate than he had previously paid, (3 cents per lb.) 
I procured teams and hauled it to the Falls of Schuylkill, where I 
resided, and where my father had some mills. Being anxious to 
try the experiment, I commenced grinding it forthwith, about sun 
down, on a four feet pair of mill stones. Finding it to grind 
easily and rapidly, I continued at it until it was finished, about 
the middle of the night. By nine o'clock next morning I had it on 
the Doctor's pavement, much to his surprise and astonishment, and 
still more so when he examined the article and the style of the 
powder, which was altogether different from anything he had ever 
before seen. He seemed to think there was some enchantment or 
magic about it, and would not believe, until he tested it in various 
ways, that it was his crenm of tartar. After some time, however, 
he became perfectly convinced of the fact, and paid me liberally 
for the job. This affair soon became known to the other drug- 
gists, and I had I believe, all their cream tartar to grind for some 
six or eight years, when my method of grinding it became 
known to others, and only within two or three years past adopt- 
ed in London. From Mr. Redwood's drafts and description of the 
drug mills in London, and from what I have heard from other 
sources, they seem to be unacquainted with the use of mill stones 
in drug grinding. 
My success in this affair led me into the business of powdering 
drugs generally, and I have been at it ever since, I could, I sup- 
pose, enumerate some twenty-five or thirty competitors I have had 
at different times, who have been tempted to go into the business 
from false and erroneous views of the profits arising from it, 
which they very soon discover are all fallacious; and they also 
become acquainted with the fact, that if they are honest in their 
business — not dealing in drugs — confining themselves entirely to 
a commission business, that is, powdering for others, as I have as 
a matter of caution and principle always done, they will, from 
the limited extent of the business, make little^or nothing of it ; and 
if, on the contrary, they are dishonest and fraudulent, they are 
