Ford's Garnets

Last week despatches called attention to one of the ramifications of Henry Ford's business not hitherto generally known. Mr. Ford owns one of the richest garnet mines in the world. It is located on the side of Bear Hill in Danbury, N. H.

The garnets from Bear Hill will never grace the tiaras of dowagers --for the stones are cloudy and flawed--but they are excellent for Mr. Ford's purposes. There is a seam of mica schist outcropping on Bear Hill with the garnets set so thickly in it, that in parts they compose 85% of the whole by weight, and the seam is expected to average 60%. Mr. Ford's engineers are still exploring the deposit, drilling holes into the hard garnets which blunt the steel drills used, with astonishing rapidity. In addition the outcropping is being blasted and carried away. The explosive readily fractures the mica which binds the garnets together and sends the stones flying. Many a carload is shipped away to Mr. Ford's glass plants.

There they are crushed into tiny fragments, and separated from other rock on inclined vibrating tables.* Then they are used for polishing the glass that goes to make windshields and windows.

* The garnets are twice as heavy as the quartz, four times as heavy as the mica with which it is found, and sinks to the bottom in the shaking process.