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Prosperity and Thrift: The Coolidge Era and the Consumer Economy, 1921-1929
The story of a pantry shelf, an outline history of grocery specialties: a machine-readable transcription.
What Matters the Price of Salt?
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What Matters the Price of Salt?
The Alberger Process of Making
Salt Costs More--but Food
Manufacturers and General
Public Alike Have Learned the
Worth-Whileness of Quality Salt
The Alberger Process of Making Salt Costs More--but Food Manufacturers and General Public Alike Have Learned the Worth-Whileness of Quality Salt
The story of the Diamond Crystal Salt Company is not the story of one man. It is, rather, the story of the hopes, the discouragements and the ultimate success of a group of men who were trying to do a commonplace thing uncommonly well.
Salt was manufactured in Michigan first by the lumbermen, who used slabs and sawdust for the fuel and cooperage necessary to evaporate the brine and contain the salt. Salt made in this way was impure and cheap, being a by-product.
In 1886 Mr. J. L. Alberger, of Buffalo, N. Y., interested
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a number of St. Clair citizens in a new process of making salt. A company was formed and Alberger's process was put into operation. A small wooden building contained the entire equipment, which could produce only 75 barrels of salt a day.
Not until 10 years after its inception did the company become a paying proposition. Through those first 10 years it was engaged in a continuous struggle for existence.
It had been expected that the process invented by Alberger would be more economical. It was soon discovered, however, that it was more expensive than any other process of making salt. But it made a higher grade, purer salt, with an unusual flake grain, and on this fact the company decided to build.
The consumer had so long been accustomed to regard salt as "just salt" that he was slow to appreciate the advantages of these fundamental differences. But when the baker, butter-maker, meat packer and canner were shown, beyond all question, that high-grade salt improved their products they became interested.
But it was slow work. The usual discouragements attendant on new enterprises were working overtime. A disastrous fire destroyed the plant. The volume of orders coming in at that time, however, justified the directors in rebuilding. Panics and financial troubles came, were weathered and came again.
It took faith and pluck and perseverance on the part of the directors, but in the end they conquered. Today there are few places in the United States where Diamond Crystal and Shaker Salt are not well known. Many of the leading food manufacturers in the country are using Diamond Crystal to season their products. Its name has been spread by the consistent use of nearly every well-established form of advertising.
The little wooden building, with a capacity of 75 barrels of salt a day, has given place to a magnificent plant of brick, steel and cement, which can produce 4,500 barrels of high-grade salt every 24 hours, besides a vast tonnage of the
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cheaper commercial grades. It stands today a splendid monument to the foresight and business acumen of the officers and directors who carried the company through its discouraging early years.
The plant of today is a very complete unit. It contains a cooper shop, which turns out all the barrels necessary to contain the salt. The moisture-proof Shaker cartons are also made in the plant to insure the high quality necessary to protect the salt. A corps of chemists is continually busy testing the brines and the salt to insure the consistent purity of Diamond Crystal.
As the business has grown the company has established branch offices throughout the country. At the present time a large corps of salesmen work out of St. Clair, Boston, New York, Chicago, Dallas, Atlanta, San Francisco, Toronto and Minneapolis.
It is a far cry from the little plant doing a small local business to the large organization that now has its representatives in every corner of this country and whose products are also used by people of foreign lands.
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