f earth that stick to it, then piled up into cones
to drain, loaded upon flat trucks, and carried to the breaker. The
salt fields are wonderfully beautiful in the moonlight, but not very
agreeable to work in, for the mercury often reaches 140 deg. F., and the
air is so full of particles of salt that the workers feel an intense
thirst, which the warm, brackish water does not satisfy. The work is
done by Indians and Japanese, for white people cannot endure the heat.

A large portion of the salt used in the United States comes directly
from rock salt strata, hundreds of feet below the surface of the
ground. These were perhaps the bed of the ocean ages and ages ago.
There is a great extent of the beds in New York, Michigan, Ohio,
Kansas, and other States. In Michigan there is a stratum of rock salt
thirty to two hundred and fifty feet thick and some fifteen hundred to
two thousand feet below the surface. To mine this would be a difficult
and expensive undertaking, and a far better way has been discovered.
First, a pipe is forced down through the surface dirt, the limestone,
and the shale to the salt stratum. The drill works inside this pipe
and bores a hole for a six-inch pipe directly into the salt. A
three-inch pipe is let down inside of the six-inch pipe, and water is
forced down through the smaller pipe. It dissolves the salt, becomes
brine, and rises through the space between the two pipes. It is
carried through troughs to some great tanks, and from these it flows
into "grain-settlers," then into the "grainers" proper, where the
grains of salt settle. At the bottom of the grainers are steam pipes,
and these make the brine so hot that before long little crystals of
salt are seen floating on the surface of the water. Crystals form much
better if the water is perfectly smooth, and to bring this about a
very little oil is poured into the grainer. It spreads over the
surface in the thinnest film that can be imagined. The water
evaporates, and the tiny crystals grow, one joining to another as they
do in rock candy. When they become larger, they drop to the bottom of
the grainer. They are now swept along in a trough to a "pocket,"
carried up by an endless chain of buckets, and then wheeled away to
the packinghouse.

The finest salt is made by using vacuum pans. These are great cans out
of which the air is pumped, and into which the brine flows. This
brine, heated by steam pipes, begins to boil, and as the steam from it
rise