Quarrying and all other branches of surface mining rather than diminishing in importance have become of more and more consequence economically, industrially and particularly with the depletion of high-grade deep-mined mineral reserves. Low-grade minerals require low cost extraction and this in many cases necessitates very expensive mechanized equipment with the cost of individual units running into millions of pounds in the case of large scale operations with high productivity. There has been, and there still is, a tendency for the smaller single quarries to be amalgamated into groups with large financial resources and therefore with the ability to purchase these expensive machines so necessary to make operations viable. This in turn requires wider administrative and technical knowledge in executives of these groups and as these often handle a wide range of products from widely differing systems of working, this technical knowledge should embrace the exploitation of many different types of deposits. There is, at present, a great dearth throughout the world of such qualified executives as is apparent from advertisements of vacancies in the technical press. It would appear that these industries offer an attractive career to the widely qualified and experienced technologist in these fields. This book deals with methods of working in the surface extractive indus tries, quarry management and power supply-but does not deal with related ancillary processes except where these affect quarrying operations.

Granite is the most unyielding of building materials. The great granite quarries of the North East are silent now, as are virtually all of the 100 granite yards that existed in Aberdeen around the year 1900. Yet in its time, the granite industry of north-east Scotland was the engine that built civilisations. As early as the sixteenth century, granite from Aberdeen and its vicinities was building castles. In the heyday of the mid-nineteenth century, the granite men of the North East hewed this material from the bowels of the earth and used it to fashion the iconic structures that defined the age. It paved the streets and embankments of London. It was used to build bridges over the Thames. It was carved into monuments for kings and commoners not only in Britain but all over the world. None of it possible without the men that toiled in those quarries and yards. This is the story of those granite men and their industry.