Evening star., 1916-12-04
THE GROWING WEST.
X.-The Great Salt Belt.
By Frederic J. Haskin.

dustry in existence. The mineral mined
is moro necessary to humanity than
any other. yet If you were to find a de-
posit OF 1t on your land tomorrow. the
value of your property would be de-
creased rather than augmented. 1t is
one OF the commonest things on earth.
and one of the hardest to handle at a
profit. The name of 1t is salt.
Salt is such familiar and omni-
present commodity that 1t comes as
surprise to find the production OF 1t
full of unusual features. AS matter
OF fact. salt mining is a process at least
as interesting as the mining OF any
other mineral. and good deal more 80
than the mining Of most Of them.
Hutchinson is the heart of an immense
salt belt, and three of the biggest COM
panies in the world operate here.
Strictly speaking, the salt Is NOT
mined at all. There are salt mines SIXTY
or seventy miles away where the min.
eral is dug with picks like coal, but
mere they send a slim pipe line oo"n
six hundred feet through the earth ana
the salt comes bubbling up into the
watts. The process has about 1t the
beauty Of a great simplicity. The sait
is lying below there, underlying an
this country in great thick beds IN
stead Of driving a SHAFT 70 II, a wn ia
pipe they pump a stream of water INTO
the bowels of the earth. Salt belns
soluble. a big salt lake soon 1orms
down in the darkness six hundred 1eet
below the wheat fields. second pipe
is sent down within the first one, ana
stream of air is pumped through II.
The air makes the salt water nshteI
than the incoming fresh water, ana IL
rises through the pipe and slopes into
the reservoir with creamy gurglea
Such is salt mining.
There Is any amount of salt here
next few thou
Enough Salt Here sand years. The
to Supply World. ,,aaor v sween
of country fifty miles by hundred and
twenty If you wish to become the
proprietor of an endless amount OF salt
all you have to do is buy farm IN this
district. There will be no extra charge
for the salt below it. any more than Tor
the blue sky overhead. These things
are thrown in, along with the climate.
This was not the case in the very pc
ginning of the salt development mere;
originally there was bit of land
boom, but experience seems to nave
shown that the salt business is PROB
lem in production rather than in find
ing raw material.
For salt is very cheap. Here in
Hutchinson. for instance. you can get
a wagon load of salt for less money
than wagon load of sand. Low prices
mean a small margin of profit. and
small profits mean that production on
G n
mense scale production on narrow
margin calls for great efficiency. for
capital. organization and marketing
connections. Hence the business has
national concerns. There Is nothing to
prevent any enterprising individual
from acquiring an almost unlimited
amount Of salt land and becoming a
producer except the fact that he prob
ably could not compete with estab-
lished companies.
The salt beds run in remarkably even
fashion under these 5000 square miles
of the Hutch
5000 Square Miles inson fields.
in Hutchinson Field. as YOU ui'i,
down you find
first a hundred feet of sand. then three
shale, then a mixed salt and shale
stratum and finally beds of pure salt
in regular layers. alternating with lay
ers of shale. The well pipes are driven
down to the top of the salt beds, and
the water pouring through them eats
out a grea: cavity that grows larger
and larger. until finally it caves in.
swapping the pipe and running the
we'll. The loss of wells is one Of the
principal items of expense in the bust
ness. These immense cavities hold also
an element of potential danger to any
structures on the land above them, if
these are of great weight. Now they
drill their wells out in the open fields,
and pipe the brine hundreds or thou
sands of yards to the works. but not so
long ago one of the big companies had
four of it's immense boilers and great
amount of other machinery engulfed in
cave-In. Wells had been opened di-
rectly below the works in that case, be-
cause of the greater convenience. II
doesn't make any difference where you
bore a well here, so far as the salt is
concerned.
After the salt water comes out of
the earth the rest of the process con-
sists mainly in evaporating it. First
1t runs through settling tanks. where
1t gets chance to deposit any foreign
matter it may be carrying, and then
1t goes to the latest development in the
salt industry-the vacuum evaporating
tanks, or pans" as they are called.
These pans are a fine example of
what a narrow profit margin will pro-
duce in the way
Fine Example; of efficient ap-
paratus. Steam
is used to heat
the brine to boiling, and under the old
process the steam from the boiling
brine and the steam used to make
1t boil were lost after they left the
vat Now they lead these hot vapors
to another vat full of brine and let