 CHAPTER X. OF DIGGERS IN THE EARTH, BY EVA MARCH TAPIN. This LibriVox recording is in the public domain, recording by April 690, California, United States of America. THE OIL IN OUR LAMPS Probably the first man who went to a spring for a drink and found oil floating on the water was decidedly annoyed. He did not care in the least where the oil came from, or what it was good for. He was thirsty and it had spoiled his drink, and that was enough for him. We know now that oil comes chiefly from strata, of course sandstone, but we are not quite sure how it happened to be there. The sand which formed these strata was deposited by water ages and ages ago. We are certain of that. Another thing that we are certain of is that where the strata lie flat there is no oil. Hot substances become smaller as they cool, and as the earth grew cooler it became smaller. The crust of the earth wrinkled as the skin of an apple does when it dries. In the tops of these great sandstone wrinkles there is often gas, and below the gas is the place where oil is found. There is no use in looking for petroleum, where the folds of the strata are very sharp, because in that case the strata cracked and left the oil flow away. It is not in pools, but the porous stone holds it just as a sponge holds water. If you drop a little oil upon a stone, even much less porous than sandstone, it will not be easy to wipe it off, because some of it will have sunk into the stone. In many places the gas forces its way out and is piped to carry to houses for light and heat. Not far above Niagara Falls there was a spring of gas which flowed for years. An iron pipe was put down, and when the gas was lighted the flame shot up three or four feet. The gas came with such force that a handkerchief put over the end of the pipe would not burn, though the flame would blaze away above it. In the country of the fire worshipers, on the shores of the Caspian Sea, fires of natural gas have been burning for ages, kindled perhaps by lightning centuries ago. There is a vast supply of oil in this place, and indeed there is hardly a country that has not more or less of it. In the United States the colonists soon learned that there was petroleum in what is now the state of New York. But New York was a long way from the Atlantic's seaboard in those days, and they went on contentedly burning candles or sperm whale oil, for a little later a rather dangerous liquid which was known as fluid. The Indians believed that the oil which appeared in the springs was a good medicine. They threw their blankets upon the water, and when these had become saturated with the oil they wrung them out and sold the oil. Those were the times, as even if a medicine only tasted and smelled bad enough, people never doubted that it would cure all their diseases, and they gladly bought the oil of the Indians. When at last it became clear to the members of an enterprising company that oil for use in lamps could be made from petroleum, they secured some land in Pennsylvania that seemed promising and set to work to dig a well. But the more they dug the more the loose dirt fell in upon them. Fortunately for the company the superintendent had brains, and he thought out a way to get the better of the crumbling soil. He simply drove down an iron pipe to the sandstone, which contained the oil, and set his borer at work within the pipe. One morning he found that the oil had gushed in nearly to the top of the well. He had struck oil. This was about ten years after the rush to California for gold, and now that this cheaper and quicker method of making a well had been invented there was almost as much of a rush to Pennsylvania for oil. With every penny that they could beg or borrow, people from the east hurried to the westward to buy or lease a piece of land in the hope of making their fortunes. A song of the day had for its reframe, stock's par stocks up, then on the wane. Everybody's troubled with oil on the brain. In the course of a year or two the first gusher was discovered. The workmen had drilled down some four or five hundred feet, and were working away peacefully, when a furious stream of oil burst forth, which hurled the tools high up into the air. Hundreds of barrels gushed out every day, and soon other gushers were discovered. The most famous one in the world is at Lakeview, California. For months it produced fifty thousand barrels of oil a day, and threw it up three hundred and fifty feet into the air in a black column, spraying the country with oil for a mile around. The oil flowed away in a river, and for a time no one could plan any way to stock it or store it. At last, however, a mammoth tank was built around the well, and made firm with stones and bags of earth. This was soon full of oil, and with all this vast weight of oil pressing down upon it, the stream could not rise more than a few feet above the surface. Just why oil should come out with such force? The geologists are not quite certain, but it is thought to result from a pressure of gas upon the sandstone containing it. The flow almost always becomes less and less, and after a time the most generous well has to be pumped. An oil field may extend over thousands of square miles, but within this field there are always pools, that is, certain smaller fields, where oil is found. Any man thinks there is oil in a certain spot, sometimes he buys the land if he is able, but often or he gets permission of the owner to borrow a well, agreeing to pay him a royalty. That is, a certain percentage of all the oil that is produced. When this has been arranged, he builds his derrick. This consists of four strong upright beams firmly held together by crossbeams. It stands directly over the place where the well is to be dug. It is from 30 to 80 feet in height according to the depth at which it is hoped to find oil. There must also be an engine house to provide the power for drilling. An iron pipe, 8 or 10 inches in diameter, is driven down through the soil until it comes to rock. Now the regular drilling begins. At the top of the derrick is a pulley. Over the pulley passes a stout rope to which the heavy drilling, tools, the string of tools as they are called, are fastened. The drilling goes on day and night. The drill makes the hole and the sand pump sucks out the water and loose bits of stone. When the drill has gone to the bottom of the strata, which carry water, the sides of the bore are cased to keep the water out. Then the drilling continues. But now the drill makes its way into the oil bearing sandstone. There is nothing certain about the search for oil. In some places it is near the surface, in others it is perhaps three or four thousand feet down. The well may prove to be a gusher and pour out hundreds of thousands of gallons a day. Or the oil may refuse to rise to the surface and have to be pumped out, even at the first. Naturally no one is prepared for a gusher and millions of gallons have often flowed away before any arrangements could be made for storing the oil. Sometimes a well that gives only a moderate flow can be made to yield generously by exploding a heavy charge of dynamite at the bottom to break up the rock and it is always hoped to open some new oil-holding crevice that the drill has not reached. The petroleum is a dark and disagreeable, bad-smelling liquid and before it can be of much use it must be refined. For several years it was carried in barrels from the oil fields to Pittsburgh by wagon and boat. A slow, expensive process and generally unsatisfactory to all but the teamsters. Then came the railroads. They provided iron tanks in the shape of a cylinder fastened to freight cars, much like those employed today. There was only one difficulty about sending oil by rail and that was that it still had to be hauled by team to the railroad, sometimes a number of miles. At length someone said to himself, why cannot we simply run a pipe directly from the well to the railroad? This was done. Pumping engines were put in a few miles apart and the invention was his success in the eyes of all but the teamsters. In spite of their opposition, however, pipelines increased, before it had been necessary to build the refineries as near the oil regions as possible in order to save the expense of carrying the oil. But now they could be built wherever it was most convenient. Today oil can be brought at a small expense from west of the Mississippi River to the Atlantic seaboard, refined and distributed throughout that part of the country. Or loaded into tankers. That is, steamships containing strong tanks of steel, and so taken across the ocean. The pipes are made of iron and are six or eight inches or more in diameter. In using them one difficulty was found which has been overcome in an ingenious fashion. Sometimes they become choked by the impurities of the oil and the flow is lessened. Then a goat devil is put into them. This is shaped like a cartridge, is about three feet in length, composed of springs and plates of iron and so flexible that it can turn around a corner. It is so made that as it slips down the current of oil it whirls around and in so doing its nose of sharp blades scrapes the pipes clean. The pipes go over hills and through swamps. They cross rivers sometimes by means of bridges and sometimes they are anchored to the bed of the stream. If they have to go through a salt marsh they are lading concrete to preserve the iron. If these lines were suddenly destroyed and oil had to be carried in the old way kerosene would become an expensive luxury. Getting the oil out of the ground and carried to the refineries is not all of the business by any means. The early oils crusted on the lamp wicks their smell was unendurable and they were given to exploding. Evidently if oil was to be used for lighting it must be improved and the first step was to distill it. To distill anything means to boil it and collect the vapor. If you hold a piece of cold earthenware in the steam of a tea kettle water will collect on it. This is distilled water and is purer than that in the kettle. Petroleum was at first distilled in a rough way but now it is done with the utmost care and exactness. The crude oil is pumped into boilers holding 600 barrels or more. The fires are started and the oil soon begins to turn into vapor. This vapor passes through coils of pipe or long straight parallel pipes. Cold water is pumped over these pipes the vapor turns into a liquid again and we have kerosene oil. This is the outline of the process but it is a small part of the actual work in all its details. Kerosene oil is only one of the many substances found in petroleum. Fortunately some of these substances are light like gasoline and benzine. Some like kerosene are heavier and paraffin and tar are heaviest of all. There are also gasses which pass off first and are saved to help keep the furnace going. Then come the others one by one. According to their weight the stillman keeps close watch and when the color and appearance of the distillate changes he turns it off into another tank. This process is called fractional distillation and the various products are called fractions. No two kinds of petroleum and no two oil wells are just alike and it needs a skillful man to manage either. Even after this distillation the kerosene still chars the wick somewhat which prevents the wick from drawing up the oil properly and it still has a disagreeable smell. To fit it for burning in the lamps it must be treated with sulfuric acid which carries away some of the impurities and then with caustic soda which carries away others. Before it can be put on the market it is examined to see whether it is of the proper color. Then come three important tests. The first is to see that it is of the proper weight. If it is too heavy it will not burn freely enough. If it is too light then there is too much of the lighter oils in it for safety. The second test is the flash test. The object of this is to see how hot the oil must be before it gives off a vapor which will burn. The third, the burning test, is to discover how hot the oil must be before it will take fire and burn on the surface. Most civilized countries make definite laws forbidding the sale of kerosene oil that is not up to a standard of safety. Oil for use in lamps should have an open flash test of at least 100 degrees Fahrenheit and a burning point of not less than 125 degrees Fahrenheit. We say that we burn oil in our lamps but what we really do is heat the oil until it gives off gas and then we burn the gas to keep the flame regular and help on the burning. We use a chimney on the lamp. The hot air rises in the chimney and the cold air underneath rushes in to take its place and bring oxygen to the flame. In a close stuffy room no lamp will give a clear light because there is not oxygen enough for its flame. Let in fresh air and the light will be brighter. If you hold a cold plate in the flame before the chimney is put on soot or carbon will be deposited. A lamp gives light because these particles of carbon become so hot that they glow. In lamps using a mantle there is the glow not only of these particles but also of the mantle. In a wax candle we light the wick. It's heat melts the wax and carries it to the flame. When the wax is made hot enough it becomes gas and we burn the gas not the wax. Wax alone will melt but not take fire even if a burning match is held to it. The reason is that the match does not give enough heat to turn the wax into gas but put a bit of wax upon a bit of burning coals where there is a good supply of heat and it will turn into gas and burn. The products made from petroleum are as different in their character and uses as paraffin and naphtha. Some of them are used for oiling machinery. Tars used for dyes. Naphtha dissolves resin to use in varnish. Vensine is the great cleanser of clothes. Printers types and almost everything else. Gasoline runs automobiles, motors and many sorts of engines. Paraffin makes candles, seals jelly glasses, covers the heads of matches so that they are no longer spoiled by being wet and makes the ever-useful waxed paper. Printers ink and waterproof roofing paper both owe a debt to petroleum. Even in medicine, though a little petroleum is no longer looked upon as a cure-all, Vaseline is one of its products is of great value. It can be mixed with drugs without changing their character and it does not become rancid. For these reasons saps and other ointments can be mixed with it and preserved for years. End of Chapter 10 Chapter 11 of Diggers in the Earth by Eva March Tappin This LibriVox recording is in the public domain. Recording by April 6090 California, United States of America Little Grains of Salt The most interesting mine in the world is that of Wieliska in Poland. In it there are some 30 miles of streets and alleys. There are churches with pillars, shrines and statues. There are stairs, monuments and restaurants. There is a ballroom 300 feet long and 190 feet high with beautiful chandeliers. And in it is a caravan thrown whereon the Emperor Franz Joseph sat when he visited the mine. There are lakes crossed by ferry boats. There is a railroad station for the mule trains which bear the precious mineral salt. For this is a salt mine. And shrines, statues, churches, chandeliers, everything are all cut out of salt. This mine has been worked for at least 800 years and still has salt enough to supply all Europe for ages. The mass of salt is believed to be 500 miles long, 50 miles wide and nearly a quarter of a mile thick. It is so pure that it is sold just as it comes from the mine either in blocks or finely ground. This mine is a wonderful place to visit almost like an enchanted palace. For as the torch light strikes the crystals of salt they flash and sparkle as if the wall was covered with rubies and diamonds. There is nothing like an enchanted palace in any salt mine of the United States. No statues or chapels or chandeliers. There is only a hole in the ground where mining is carried on in much the same manner as in other kinds of mines. The shaft is sunk and lined with timbers to keep the dirt from falling in just as in other mines. In working salt mines however water is almost as bad as earth and therefore a layer of clay is put between the timbers and the earth. There are the usual galleries and pillars with roof and floor of salt. The workmen try to get the salt out in lumps or blocks as far as possible and so they bore in drill holes and then blast with dynamite or powder. The salt is loaded upon little cars running on tracks and is carried up the shaft into the top of a breaker usually more than 100 feet above the surface of the ground. There it is dumped upon a screen of iron bars which lets the fine salt fall through. The large lumps are sold without crushing or sifting and are used for cattle and sheep. One of the great deposits of salt is in southeastern California. It is thought that the Gulf of California used to run much farther north than it now does and that the earth rose shutting away part of it from the ocean. This imprisoned water was full of salt. In time it dried and the sand blew over it till it was far underground. A better way than digging was found to work it as will be seen later. But while digging was going on the workmen built a cottage of blocks of salt clear and glassy. The little rain that falls there melted the blocks only enough to unite them firmly together and there the house has stood for many years. Countries that have no deposits of rock salt can easily get plenty of salt from the water of the ocean if they only have a sea coast. About one-thirtieth of the ocean water is salt if the water is evaporated the salt can be collected without difficulty. France makes a great deal of salt in this way. When a man goes into the manufacturer or rather the collecting of salt he first of all buys or rents a piece of land perhaps several acres of it that lies just above high water and makes it as level as possible. Unless it is very firm land he covers it with clay so that the water will not soak through it. Then he divides it into large square basins making each a little lower than the one before it. Close beside the highest basin he makes a reservoir which at high tide receives water from the ocean. This flows slowly from the reservoir through one basin after another becoming more and more salt as the water evaporates. At length the water is gone and the salt remains. The workmen take wooden scrapers and push the salt toward the walls of the basins and then shovel it up on the dykes and heap it into creamy cones that sparkle in the sunshine. The dykes are narrow, raised pathways beside the basins and between them. As you walk along on top of them you can smell a faint violet perfume from the salt. Thatches put over the cones to protect them from the rain and there they stand till some of the impurities drain away. This salt is not perfectly white because the workmen cannot help scraping up a little of the gray or reddish clay with it. Most of it is sold as it is. Nevertheless, for many people have an absurd notion that the darker it is the purer it is. For those who wish to buy white salt it is sent to a refinery to be washed with pure water and then boiled down and dried. So it is that the sun helps to manufacture salt. In some of the colder countries frost does the same work but in a very different manner. When salt water freezes the water freezes but the salt does not and a piece of salt water ice is almost as pure as that made of fresh water. Of course after part of the water in a basin of salt water has been frozen out and what is left is more salt than it was at first and after the freezing has been repeated several times only a little water remains and evaporation will soon carry this away leaving only salt in the basin waiting to be purified. Not very many years ago one of the encyclopedias remarked that the deposits of salt in the United States are unimportant. This was true as far as the working of them was concerned but in 1913 the United States produced more than 34 million barrels. Part of this was made by evaporation of the waters of salt springs and a small share from Great Salt Lake in Utah the early settlers in Utah used to gather salts from the shallow bays or lagoons where the water evaporated during the summer but now dams of earth hold back the water in a reservoir. In the spring the pumps are put to work and the reservoir is soon filled with water. This is left to stand and give the impurities a chance to settle to the bottom. Then it is allowed to flow into smaller basins while more water is pumped into the reservoir. When autumn comes the crop of salt is ready to be harvested. It is in the form of a crust three to six inches thick some of it in large crystals and some fine grained. This crust is broken by plows and the salt is heaped up into great cones and left for the rain to wash clean. Then it goes to the mill for purifying. The water of Great Salt Lake is much more salty than that of the ocean. It preserves timber remarkably well and often salt from the lake is put around telephone poles 75 pounds being dropped into the hole for each one it has been suggested to soak timber in the lake and then paint it with creosote to keep the wet out and the salt in. Salt is also made from the waters of salt springs which the Indians thought were the homes of evil spirits. At Salton in California an area of more than 1,000 acres which lies 264 feet below sea level is flooded with water from salt springs. When this water has evaporated all these acres are covered with salt 10 to 20 inches thick and as dazzlingly white as if it was snow. This great field is plowed up with a massive four-wheeled implement called a salt plow. It is run by steam and needs to men to manage it. The heavy steel plowshare breaks up the salt crust making broad shallow furrows and throwing the salt in ridges on both sides. The plow has hardly moved on before the crust begins to form again. This broken crust is worked in water by men with hose in order to remove the bits of 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 degrees Fahrenheit 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 30 to 250 feet thick and some 1500 to 2000 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 6 inch pipe directly into the salt. A 3 inch pipe is let down inside of the 6 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 and 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 grainers. It spreads over the surface in the thinnest film that can be imagined. The water evaporates and the tiny crystals grow joining to another as they do in rock candy. When they become larger they drop to the bottom of the grainers. 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 packing house. 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 rises it has to pass through a pipe at the top and it is carried into a small tank into which cold water is flowing. The cold makes the steam condense into water which runs off. The condensed water occupies less space than the steam and so maintains the vacuum in the pan. For a perfect vacuum the brine is boiled at less than 100 degrees Fahrenheit while in an open pan or greener it requires 226 degrees to boil brine. The brine is soon so rich in salt that tiny crystals begin to form. These are taken out and dried. If you look at some grains of table salt through a magnifying glass you can see that each grain is a tiny cubicle crystal. Sometimes two or three are united and often the corners are rounded off and worn but they show plainly that they are little cubes. Most of the salt used on our tables is made by the vacuum process or by an improved method which produces tiny flakes of salt similar to snowflakes. The salt brine is heated to a high temperature and filtered. In the filters the impurities are taken out and this process gives us very pure salt. The tiny flakes dissolve more easily than the cubes of salt and thus flavor food more readily. With a few savage tribes salt is regarded as a great luxury but with most peoples it is looked upon as a necessity. Some of the early races thought a salt spring was a special gift of the gods and in their sacrifices they always used salt in later times to sit above the salt. Between the great ornamental salt seller and the master of the house of honor, less distinguished guests were seated below the salt to eat a man's salt and then be unfaithful to him has always been looked upon as a shameful act. And with some of the savages so long as a stranger ate his salt that is was a guest in the house of any one of them he was safe. To eat salt together is an expression of friendliness. Cakes of salt have been used as money in various parts of Africa and Asia. Attic salt means wit because the Athenians who lived in Attica were famous for their keen delicate wit. To take a story or a statement with a grain of salt means not to accept it entirely but only to believe it partially. When Christ told his disciples that they were the salt of the earth he meant that their lives and teaching would influence others just as salt affects the article of food and changes its flavor. Our word salary comes from the Latin word sal meaning salt or and salarium or salt money was money given for paying one's expenses on a journey. Living without salt would be a difficult matter. Cattle that have been shut away from it for a while are almost wild to get it. Farmers living among the mountains cattle to a mountain pasture to remain there through the summer and every little while they go up to salt the animals. The cattle know the call and know that it means salt and I have seen them come rushing down the mountain side and through the woods over fallen trees through briars and down slippery rocks bellowing as they came and plunging head first into a wild frenzy to get to the pieces of rock salt waiting for them. End of Chapter 11 End of Diggers in the Earth by Eva March Tappan