exported 238,000,000 pounds of soda ash, 97,378,000 pounds of caustic soda and 40,969,000 pounds of other soda products.

Michigan salt production began in connection with the great sawmills of lumber towns like Saginaw and Manistee. Vast accumulations of mill refuse were burned to get rid of them, until it occurred to the mill men that this cheap fuel might be turned to profitable use if salt or brine could be found in the earth below. Wells were drilled until they penetrated caverns and seams in porous limestone rock which were filled with strong brine. This was pumped to the surface and evaporated to salt.

After Crockett McElroy discovered rock salt at Marine City at a depth of 1,600 feet the salt was obtained by pumping water into the salt and bringing it to the surface again as a saturated salt solution. This process was also employed at the Wyandotte alkali works and at the Solvay plant. For many purposes in the meat-packing and hide-curing industries in particular-rock salt is preferred to evaporated salt. Several attempts were made to sink shafts to the rock salt beds in the down-river district, but the earlier ones were failures because the 1,000 feet of limestone rock which covers the salt is faulty and filled with seams which contain hydrogen sulphide gas at high pressure. Some of the seams also contain brackish and sulphurated water at high pressure. Several men lost their lives and others were temporarily blinded by this gas, but presently patient endeavor and human ingenuity triumphed over apparently insuperable difficulties and a dry, gas-free shaft 1,100 feet deep was sunk to the upper layer of rock salt 34 feet. thick near where the River Rouge crosses Fort Street West.

Rock salt of the best quality has been mined there for several years and already the radiating avenues of the mine aggregate a total length of 20 miles. Each of them penetrates a solid mass of salt and all radiate from a common center about the foot of the shaft. All the machinery is operated by electricity and the mine is as dry and clean as a parlor.

But whence came these vast deposits of salt hidden away beneath hundreds of feet of sedimentary rocks and many feet of

surface soil? For answer one must turn to the story of creation which the Grand Architect of the Universe has written with His own Hand in the soil and rocks beneath our feet and in the stars of the heavens-which, science tells us, are composed of the same materials as the earth but in a different stage of construction and evolution. Millions of years ago a vast and deep ocean rolled over the region about Detroit. The climate was for a long time tropical, we know, for the fossilized remains of animal life now found therein were such as only live in warm

water.

Slowly the earth crust was heaved upward in some places while in compensation it sank down in other places. Presently a rim of mountain ranges and high land rose above the surface carrying a pocketed and isolated sea of salt water upward with it. Cut off from tributary streams and subjected to the action of a burning sun and hot winds the water slowly evaporated, leaving a residue of glistening salt. All this time the earth crust was pulsating up and down like the surface of a kettle of cooling lard. This region sank again below sea level and a smaller sea was formed over the place where the ocean once stood.

Into this sea poured many tributary streams and all manner of crustaceans, corals, infusoria and-later-marine animals were developed in it. The salts of lime precipitated from the tributary waters settled to the bottom to be washed about for ages by the action of the tides. In this mixture of silt, lime, magnesia and other minerals, dead animals became imbedded, to become a part of the general structure. The slime solidified slowly until it became limestone rock. How long did it take to make a deposit 1,000 feet thick under Detroit?

Again the surface was heaved upward and far away toward the northwest rose a mighty mountain range. The climate for some reason unknown became intensely cold. Perhaps something happened to the sun which for a time reduced its eternal fires to a dull glow. Perhaps something came between the earth and the sun that for hundreds of years cut off its heat. At any rate something happened which allowed this once tropical region

to accumulate a vast blanket of ice many hundreds of feet thick on the sides of the great mountain range, and the slope of the land caused the ice to slowly slide over the limestone rock surface, bringing down from the northeast a vast collection of granite boulders which are entirely foreign to the district about Detroit. We find their parent bed in the Laurentian granite which lies north and east of Lake Superior and Georgian Bay.

This ice flow ground the surface of the limestone to slime again, mingled with it the ground granite, sandstone and shales into a pasty mass with pebbles and boulders scattered through it, which was later to become the soil for the subsistence of all manner of animal and vegetable life, after the great glaciers, having performed their appointed tasks, had melted away. The earth crust about Detroit was now left at an elevation of 500 feet and more above sea level and into the huge bowls and hollows scooped out by the ice poured many fresh water streams to form the Great Lakes.

I

CHAPTER CXI

REFRIGERATOR CARS AND THE PACKING

INDUSTRY

T has often happened that a very simple invention has not only founded the fortune of the inventor and his associates

but has opened the way to big business for a number of industries. One of these inventions was the refrigerator car, which was first constructed by William Davis of Detroit, in 1868. Michigan and other states of the Great Lakes region produced large quantities of beef, pork, mutton, and fish, but the market was restricted because of the perishable nature of these products. Mr. Davis saw an opportunity to extend the range of this trade and with that purpose in view he invented a freezing process and built a refrigerator car.

For more than a year he labored to interest meat packers and after a time succeeded in inducing George H. Hammond of Detroit to venture the sending of a carload of beef from Detroit to Boston in an ice-cooled refrigerator car. Mr. Hammond had started a small meat market several years before at the southwest corner of Howard and Third streets. He was a man of remarkable energy and business ability. In 1865 his local trade had increased to a large volume and he moved to the south side of Cadillac Square, then termed Michigan Grand Avenue, in the rear of the old Russell House. Soon afterward he entered into partnership with J. D. Standish and Sidney R. Dixon under the firm name of Hammond, Standish & Company. This firm erected a large packing plant on Twentieth Street and was soon doing the largest business of the kind in Michigan.

The carload of fresh beef shipped to Boston showed a big profit and Mr. Hammond entered into another partnership with Caleb Ives to carry on a fresh beef transportation business. One car served for the shipments of the first year; II were required the second year; 21 for the third year. In 1885 the

firm was using 800 refrigerator cars and was delivering three shiploads of beef and pork a week at the Atlantic coast.

The firm name in the meantime had been changed to George H. Hammond & Company. Huge slaughterhouses and stockyards were established on the main railway lines near the border of Indiana and Illinois, and there the city of Hammond sprang up. The firm also established a packing industry at Qmaha, Neb., where cattle from the western plains found a market. Before the death of Mr. Hammond the concern was consuming 2,000 cattle a day and its annual business ranged from 12 to 15 millions of dollars. This was made possible through the invention of the refrigerator car. It may be said in passing that Mr. Hammond erected the first 10-story building in Detroit.

Mr. Hammond was a poor boy who left school at the age of 10 to work in a pocketbook factory at Ashburnham, Mass., and from that time he earned his way in the world.

He left the pocketbook factory to work in a meat market for several months and then went to Fitchburg to work three years in a factory which made mattresses and palm-leaf hats, for which he was paid $40 a year and board. He came to Detroit in 1854 when his employer, Milton Frost, moved here to engage in the manufacture of mattresses and furniture on a small scale. Mr. Hammond started a small chair factory at the corner of Farmer and State Street (now Gratiot Avenue), but was soon burned out. After settling with the insurance company and paying his debts his capital was reduced to $13, but with this and a little borrowed money he set up a meat market at the southeast corner of Howard and Third streets, which was the beginning of his successful career.

Refrigerator cars and refrigerator machines opened the way for the development of a mammoth industry and the accumulation of many great fortunes in the United States. Most of the founders of the great packing industries began life as poor boys. One of the most notable of these was Philip Danforth Armour, born on a farm in Madison County, N. Y. With a company of other youthful adventurers he went to California seeking gold and came back home in 1856 with little to show for his venture