IOs = University Geological Survey of Kansas. 
road, the raw material must either be hauled to the mills or the 
mills must be located at the mines and the finished product 
hauled to the road. 
Few plaster companies have been organized in Kansas suffi- 
ciently strong to construct switches from the main line of a 
railroad out to the mines, when they were located several miles 
away. Or possibly a better way to state it is, that few com- 
panies have deemed it a wise business enterprise. Therefore 
at Medicine Lodge, Burns, and some other places, the mills 
have been located at the railroad and the raw material carted a 
distance of from four to eight miles from the mines to the mills. | 
These operators consider the cost of hauling the extra weight of 
the raw material less than that of hauling the manufactured 
material one way and the fuel the other. 
In some instances there are other considerations also which 
have a bearing on the subject. lor example, at Medicine 
Lodge the mines are about six miles southwest of the city at 
the top of high hills and in undesirable places for residences 
of people engaged in the enterprise. With the mills placed at 
the mines it would necessitate the constant traveling back and 
forth of the employees and the proprietors, or the establishment 
of homes where they are not wanted. All such considerations 
should be carefully weighed before deciding on the location of 
a mill. 
It may frequently happen that under one set of conditions 
the mills should be established at the railroad and the raw ma- 
tertal hauled from the mines to the mills, while under another 
set of conditions the mills should be established at the mines 
and the fuel hauled out to the mills and the finished product 
hauled back to the railroad. When hauling is done in one 
direction only, the vehicles must travel empty half the time. 
They could therefore haul fuel from the railroad to the mills 
for almost nothing. The manufactured material weighs little 
more than two-thirds as much as the raw material. If, there- 
fore, the conditions of living and of other conveniences around 
the mines are as favorable as at the railroad station, it will 
generally be found desirable to locate the mills at the mines 
