Walter A. Rukeyser, Asbestos Mining and Milling in Quebec, Part II (1922)

A reprint of the second part of an article by Walter A. Rukeyser, a New York consulting engineer, first published in the Engineering and Mining Journal on April 22, 1922. It walks through how asbestos was mined and milled in the Quebec district around Thetford Mines and Black Lake: hand-cobbing of the rock ("the final cobbing is done by girls"), open-pit and early underground mining, crushing, drying, screening and the suction that lifted the fiber from the rock, with flow sheets, grading tables and detailed costs.

What it shows

The article describes the milling process as "much the same today as when established in 1889": the rock was crushed, dried and screened, and fans sucked the loose fiber into collectors, after which screens removed "all adhering dust and rock particles." It names the main companies of the district, among them the Asbestos Corporation of Canada, the Bell mine, the Black Lake Asbestos & Chrome Co. and Johns-Manville. On the workforce, Rukeyser writes that the men were nearly all French-Canadians, that unions "do not exist," and that the mines took safety precautions; he notes that Johns-Manville had hired "an efficiency and safety engineer" and organized a hospital. The article does not discuss dust disease.

About this copy

This is a later reprint of the 1922 article. The address on the cover uses New York postal zone numbers, which came into use in 1943, so the reprint was probably printed in the 1940s or after.