Albert Frederick Calvert

“ It has always been obvious to every intelligent investigator outside the little circle of salt proprietors, that the open-pan process was a survival of the dark ages, but the principle governing the precipitation of salt from brine is so simple that the equal difficulty presented itself to the practical salt-men, of either effecting further simplification or of securing further economies by the elaboration of the process. ”

“ Everything is of solid salt, except where some insecure roof is supported by huge timbers or a wooden bridge is thrown over some vast chasm. As depth is attained the air grows drier and purer, and the points and faces of the rock become more crystalline and beautiful. ”

“ The technical knowledge acquired by experience enabled a man to see at a glance whether the pan was working properly, and the quantity and quality of the salt showed whether his work had been well or ill done. The late Thomas Ward was a greatly respected authority, one of the most reliable experts of the Salt Union, and a voluminous writer and indefatigable lecturer on every aspect of the subject of salt, but he failed to persuade himself that it was even thinkable that the open-pan system should ever be abandoned in favour of a more scientific, more rapid, or more economical process. ”

“ There are no falls of earth, as in coal mines, for the rock-salt is extremely tenacious, and the miners never undermine it but blast it, which is a much safer operation. The two great dangers to which rock-salt mining is exposed, though they rarely result in loss to human life, are the falling in of the mine bodily, or of the shafts and neighbouring earths, and the breaking in of brine either at the head of the top-rock shaft or from old mines, long disused, and full of brine. ”

“ Let it be clearly understood that all commercial salt is produced either from the sea or from rock-salt. Sea-water is evaporated to precipitate its salt either by the heat of the sun or by artificial heat. Rock-salt is mined and refined for market purposes, and it is resolved into brine from which the salt is extracted by solar heat or the process of boiling, but whether the salines are obtained from salt lakes or from natural brine springs, or are prepared by flooding salt deposits with water and pumping it out in the form of fully saturated brine, rock-salt is the foundation for them all. ”

“ In 1890, an official of the Salt Union reflected with grim complaisance that, although no trade had had more patents applied to it than the salt trade, no trade could show so large a percentage of failures in the matter of reformed methods, and since all the companies that had brought forward new plants and processes in competition with the Salt Union had come short of success, he piously concluded that the system which had survived the trial of generations must be the fittest. ”

“ The facts that the chief accompaniment of every known deposit of rock-salt is clay, and that clay is deposited in water, formed the basis of the erroneous theory that because salt is a deposit out of water, and sea-water contains salt, all salt beds must have been deposited in the sea. But salt does not mix mechanically with water and has not been deposited like sedimentary rocks; it forms a solution, and not until the solution becomes super-saturated does it crystallize out. Now sea-water rarely contains more than 31⁄2 per cent. ”

“ THE BEGINNINGS OF THE SALT INDUSTRY Salt, being existent in all animal and vegetable life, is coeval with life itself; it was present in the first herbage which gave nourishment to the first beast that, in its turn, became food for the first omnivorous man. In the beginning, man consumed the saline essences that were required to preserve his body in health, in the form of sodium chloride, which he absorbed in the uncooked flesh of animals, birds, and fishes, and in raw green-foods. ”

“ Chrysel is himself amazed that pans containing 360, 900, and even 1,400 cubic feet of brine can be boiled into salt in the same space of time, and he is feign to admit that “up to now, nobody, to my knowledge, has proved what length, breadth, and depth of pan is calculated to make the most salt with the least consumption of coal. Consequently everywhere are to be found many different pans, and other varieties are continually being tested. ”

“ It is largely owing to its preservative property that common salt is an absolute necessity to the life of man and the higher animals, from a quarter to half an ounce a day being sufficient to prevent the putrefaction of food in the digestive tract in the case of an adult. In agriculture, salt is not only valuable as a destroyer of weeds and insect life, but used sparingly and with knowledge, it forms an excellent manure; while its more strictly chemical value in the manufacture of soda, chlorine, etc., causes it to play an important part in many branches of industry. ”

“ Every shower of rain creates a certain amount of mud or sand, and every brook and stream running into the salt lakes during the rainy season brings in a certain quantity of the same material. The mud represents the wet season of the year, and the salt the dry season. The geological conditions must have been the same when salt was deposited in Cheshire, and with the instances of modern salt-forming regions before us, and the strata of the Cheshire salt country to guide us, it must be concluded that the genesis of rock-salt, modified by local circumstances, must have been the same in every case. ”

“ Individuals in every generation recognized that the methods of mediaevalism cried aloud for revision, but the salt trade resolutely and consistently set their faces, and their hands, against every suggested innovation. The salt-men were the avowed enemies of Thomas Lowndes, they drove Chrysel back to Saxony, they loaded Furnival with misfortune and landed him in gaol. ”

“ But, although the salt industry is one of the oldest in the country, it has received scant treatment at the hands of authors, and this is accounted for by the factiv that the trade has been conducted by a comparatively small group of men who have resisted all attempts of outsiders to participate in either their secrets or their profits. The desire for information has been consistently rebuked, and practical details relating to borings, working expenses, levels of brine, and quantities raised have been jealously concealed. ”

“ Where the temperature varies, as in the open-pan system, crystals of varying shapes and sizes are produced, and this mixed salt must be ground to make it suitable for table purposes. Where steam heat is employed, as in the vacuum process, the temperature is not high enough to make crystals of the smallest size. By the Hodgkinson system the primary pan produces a precipitation which requires no grinding, which flows in a cascade of salt from the pan, and can be delivered to the consumer without having come into contact with the hand of man in the whole course of the operation. ”

“ By multiple effect evaporation, a great economy in the amount of steam required is effected. Between the evaporation of brine and that of other liquors, the chief difference to be noted is that in the multiple effect system, each pan or unit is supplied with its brine independently of the others, and graining goes on in the pans, whereas in concentrating other liquors the pans are fed from the first to the second and from the second to the third. The removal of the salt from each pan has, therefore, to be arranged for. ”

“ The opposition of the salt trade to the introduction of new methods of manufacture is explained by the fact that the profits accruing from the old, clumsy, crude, and wasteful process were so large that the proprietors could see no possible reason for welcoming innovations. Moreover, the manufacture under established conditions was in the hands of a comparatively small number of makers, who could not adopt new measures without letting in more men, and the long tenure of their monopoly made the salt-men intolerant of a competitive system. ”

“ The story of the exploitation of the top and bottom beds is one that is soon told. The top bed was worked until the mines began to fall in and the subsequent breaking in of fresh water converted the old workings into brine reservoirs. In 1779, the discovery of the lower bed of rock-salt at Lawton prompted the owners of the Marston Mine at Northwich to sink below the top bed in which they were working, and, in 1781, a trial shaft which was sunk from the top mine by means of a horse gin, demonstrated the existence of the bottom deposit in that district. ”

“ The pumping from the reservoirs formed by the flooding of the old mines does not empty these huge receptacles, as the place of the brine is continuously retaken by fresh water, which naturally gravitates to these centres and proceeds to dissolve and take up its quota of rock-salt. When a subsidence occurs on the site of these old workings it is of the most destructive nature, and as all the top-rock mines were in the neighbourhood of streams and brooks, the surface waters flow into the cavity until it is filled to the level of the earth and allows the streams to pursue their proper course. ”

“ Particles of chloride of sodium in volcanic ejections were no explanation of the formation of huge deposits of rock-salt, and since it was realized that salt in large quantity can only be obtained from salt water, and that it cannot be got naturally from the sea, it became evident that what man does in isolating tracts of sea-water to produce salt by solar evaporation, must have been practised by nature on an extensive scale in all ages. ”

“ Standing on the ancient assumption in law that everything beneath a man’s property belongs to the owner, the owners of property in the affected districts contended that they were not only being deprived of the rock-salt which legally belonged to them, but were further despoiled by having their land made worthless by the abstraction of the salt for which they received no payment. ”

“ As soon as this is in, they boil sharply till the second scum arise: then scum it off as before, and boil very gently till it corne; to procure which, when part of the brine is wasted they put into each pan of the size aforesaid, about a quarter of a pint of the best and strongest ale they can get: this makes a momentary ebullition, which is soon over, and then they abate their fires yet not so but that they keep it boiling all over though gently: for the workmen say that if they boil fast here, it wastes their salt. ”

“ Even in this country, when the old open-pan system of evaporating salt from brine produced only two tons of salt for the consumption of a ton of fuel, rock-salt could be raised, purified, and marketed in competition with white salt, but the modern boiling processes have effected such substantial improvements and consequent economical advantages, that the rock-salt industry appears to be doomed to decay. ”

“ The end of Furnival need not occupy us; he came into the salt trade in 1822 with a sufficiency of financial backing, an unusual stock of confidence and energy, and a patent which “created a sensation through the whole salt trade”; we take our leave of him eleven years later in a debtors’ gaol—a victim to the methods which the Cheshire salt proprietors invariably adopted in ridding themselves of an obtrusive competitor. ”

“ In Nevada, at the sink of the Carson River, is an area of five square miles which was once the bed of a salt lake. The famous Great Salt Lake, between the Wahsatch Mountains and the Nevadas in America, is the remains of a large inland sea which once covered the district, and should the climate become drier than it is now, the shrinkage, which went on for ages, will be resumed, and a huge salt deposit will be formed. ”

“ The opponents of the Bill declared that a compensation tax upon the salt trade would severely injure the industry and act as a restraint upon trade; they put forward expert witnesses to contend that if the brine—which they contended was produced by rainfall percolating through the superincumbent strata and reaching the salt—was not pumped out, it would run away to the sea, and the consequent subsidence of land and injury to property would not be arrested. ”

“ The quantity of rock-salt mined was small compared with coal. No mine in the district yielded above 40,000 tons per annum.
Rock-salt is more free from danger than most kinds of mining; no explosions occur, for there are no deleterious gases, and accidents are rare. In a general way103 the rock-salt strata are remarkably free from carbonic acid gas, and in only one instance in Northwich, and twice at Meadow Bank, Winsford, does fire-damp appear to have been met with, and then only at pipe veins and in very small quantity. ”

“ The main difficulty with which the manufacturers of New York State have to contend is the calcium sulphate. In fact, it is this impurity which causes the interruption of the process, and the laborious cleaning out, whether the kettle, the pan, the grainer, or the vacuum pan is used. It not only entails a great loss of heat in consequence of its slow conductivity, but it also causes the overheating of the metal exposed to direct fire, wherever this is employed. ”

“ In order to accelerate the condensation of the brine, the salt-maker adds and mixes into it bullock’s blood, or calf’s blood, or buck’s blood, which dissolves and is distributed into all the corners of the caldron. When the boiling water seems to be mixed with scum, it is skimmed with a ladle, and from the firing of the furnace to the skimming of the boiling scum is the work of half an hour. ”

“ Where the salt deposits are composed of a mineral that is white, odourless, and practically pure, as in the Wieliezka system and the mines of Rumania, and particularly if labour is abundant and cheap, and the industry is a monopoly of the State, rock-salt mining will always hold its own. ”

“ To obtain the best effect in a grainer system, the temperature of the heated brine is kept at or near the boiling-point when no lifting or removal of salt is in progress. To do this an abundance of high-pressure steam must first be supplied to the grainers, and, secondly, the constant supply of brine required for the grainers while evaporation is going on, must enter at a temperature but little lower than that of the brine in the grainer. For this purpose two large tanks, called settlers, are employed, which are usually as long and wide as the grainers, but 6 ft. ”