If there was ever money to be made, you could be sure that a Rockefeller was behind it. Here is an article on how John D. Rockefeller bought up the asbestos supplies to be used in the manufacture of different products.
Rockefeller Asbestos King
Has Cornered the World’s Supply and Will Exploit It
Asbestos, as a manufactured commodity, is now controlled by the Standard Oil company. The corporation has contracted for the entire output of the Ontario asbestos mines, from which comes all except a small percent of the asbestos of the world.
The plan is to make the asbestos industry proportionately as vast and wholly as monopolistic as the coal oil industry. John D. Rockefeller and his associates deem that they have found a new field for their gigantic operations.
Asbestos, in their hands, is to be a material employed for a hundred new purposes. Railroad coaches are to be lined with it, and fireproof furniture is to be made from it.
As an indication that there is no exaggeration in this outlook, the corporation has prepared plans for asbestos cars built with steel frames for the underground system of the Rapid Transit company of New York, which it will submit shortly. It has also been given the contract for lining with asbestos a large part of the tunnels of the same system.
These two uses for the fireproof mineral are sufficiently opposite to show the scope the new industry will have. For the cars, asbestos boards, tougher than oak and indestructible, are employed. For the tunnel lining, a plaster of short length asbestos fiber mixed with pulp is used.
Only the best quality of asbestos – fibers several inches long – can be put into planks. The remnants will do for the plaster.
The asbestos planks, experiments have shown, can be shaped and used exactly as wood. They may be sawed, and planed, and polished; they will bear weight and will stand wear. They are much lighter than wood.
It is said plans will be made for the Pullman company for fireproof sleeping cars of this order. Tests are to be made as to what would happen to an asbestos car in the event of a collision. The planks, it has developed, shatter, but do not splinter. The claim is made that injuries would be lessened in consequence, in addition to the guarantee that the wreck would not take fire.
The process of making asbestos timber is not unlike that of making paper pulp, only it is asbestos and clay instead of wood which is put through the process.
Asbestos is mined in comparatively small quantities at several places in the United States, but the principal source of the supply is in the eastern part of Canada, where one Canadian family of five members own the land where it is found most abundantly. After having had many offers refused the Standard Oil company bid $5,000,000 for the property held by this family.
Source: The Virginia Enterprise. Newspaper. February 26, 1904.
