Page 25 - This Was Marble Mountain

ISSUE : Issue 22

Published by Ronald Caplan on 1979/6/1

CONTINUED FROM THE BACK COVER m the tracks were converging on the face of the quarry like a big fan. And there was so much activity there that the rails glistened like silver. You got above the quarry on a Sunday looking at it • it was a marvelous sight to see. A. D. MacFadyen; At first they had towers • one above and one below • with cables run on steam, carrying big deep steel pans. You'd fill that up with stone at the top and then the man in the tower would carry that down on the cable and dump it into the crusher. But the pan had the disadvan? tage that it only would drop the one place, only pick up the one place • and you'd have to carry your stone over and put it there. Then they got a little more modern and they put railway tracks up there. They had a drum house and you'd hook the car onto a cable and they'd run that one down and its weight would bring an empty up. No steam or electricity or anything. At the bottom a fellow with a horse would unhook the car and hook onto the horse and take it over and dump the stone in the crusher. That was very modern. That did away with the pans and towers. My first work was loading cars • picking up the stone and putting it into the cars • you made $1.40 a day • 10 hours. If you were a big strong man and you could handle a 14-pound sledge, they paid you a dollar and a half a day • breaking that rock. You Tina and A. D. MacFadyen just broke it and chucked it to one side, and I came along and loaded it in the car. No shovel. Just jliour hands. The only thing you'd pick up with a shovel, what they CONTINUED ON THE NEXT PAGE Cape Breton's Magazine/25

Cape Breton's Magazine