Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 45.djvu/374

358 portion of their support from the bluestone industry, while in the larger cities outside the bluestone belt hundreds of stonecutters are employed in dressing the stone. The wages run from a dollar and a quarter a day for common laborers to three dollars and a half a day for stonecutters, blacksmiths, tool makers, expert quarrymen, and other skilled labor. It would be hard to give a correct estimate as to the exact number of people who profit by the bluestone industry, as its influence is felt in all branches of mercantile trade, in lines of both water and land transportation, and, in fact, every industry throughout the district where the stone is found. To paralyze the bluestone traffic would mean to paralyze all branches of trade throughout that country.



The bluestone trade amounts to nearly three million dollars annually, two thirds of which is paid out in wages.

The manner of working bluestone after it leaves the quarries is worthy of notice. Before it is taken to the docks the stone receives only a superficial dressing. At the docks it is piled up, and such as is needed to fill immediate orders is sent to the cutting mills. Here the large slabs are laid on huge bed planers and planed smooth as a board. Others are sent to the saws, which consist of a gang of thin strips of plate iron, running horizontally over the surface of the stone. Under the edges of the saws, which are toothless, is kept a supply of wet sand very sharp in grain. The constant grinding of the saws in the sand soon cuts into the stone and rends it into slabs or bars of the required size. Other stone