Among the Forces | Page 6

become solid, sooner than salt does. Hence with nice
care the other minerals can be left solid on the bushes, while the salt
brine falls off. Afterward pure water can be turned on and these other
minerals can be washed off in a solution of their own. No fairies could
work better than those of solution and crystallization.

MORE GRAVITATION
At Hutchinson, Kan., there are great beds of solid rock salt four
hundred feet below the surface. Men want to get and use two thousand
barrels a day. How shall they get it to the top of the ground? They
might dig a great well--or, as the miners say, sink a shaft--pump out the
water, go down and blast out the salt, and laboriously haul it up in
defiance of gravitation. No; that is too hard. Better ask this strong
gravitation to bring it up.
But does it work down and up? Did any one ever know of gravitation
raising anything? O yes, many things. A balloon may weigh as much as
a ton, but when inflated it weighs less than so much air; so the heavier

air flows down under and shoulders it up. When a heavy weight and a
light one are hung over a pulley, the light one goes up because gravity
acts more on the other. Water poured down a long tube will rise if the
tube is bent up into a shorter arm.
Exactly. So we bore a four-inch hole down to the salt and put in an iron
tube.
We do not care about the water. It is no bother. Then inside of this tube
we put a two-inch tube that is a few feet higher. Now pour water down
the small longer tube. It saturates itself with salt, and comes flowing
over the top of the shorter tube as easily as water runs down hill.
Multiply the wells, dry out the water, and you have your two thousand
barrels of salt lifted every day--just as easy as thinking!
We want a steady, unswerving force that will pull our clock hands with
an exact motion day and night, year in and year out. We hang up a
string, and ask gravitation to take hold and pull. We put on some lead
or brass for a handle, to take hold of. It takes hold and pulls,
unweariedly, unvaryingly, and ceaselessly.
It turns single water-wheels with a power of more than twelve hundred
horses.
It holds down houses, so that they are not blown away. It was made to
serve man, and it works without a grumble.
Thus the higher force in nature always prevails over the lower, and the
greater amount over the less amount of the same force. What is the
highest force?

THE FAIRY PULLS GREAT LOADS
Far back in the hills west of Mauch Chunk, Pa., lie great beds of coal.
They were made under the sea long ages ago, raised up, roofed over by
the Allegheny Mountains, and kept waiting as great reservoirs of power
for the use of man.

But how can these mountains be gotten to the distant cities by the sea?
Faith in what power can say to these mountains, "Be thou removed far
hence, and cast into the sea?" It is easy.
Along the winding sides of the mountains have been laid two rails like
steel ribbons for a dozen miles, from the coal beds to water and railroad
transportation. Put a half dozen loaded cars on the track, and with one
man at the brake, lest gravitation should prove too willing a helper,
away they go, through the springtime freshness or the autumn glory,
spinning and singing down to the point of universal distribution.
[Illustration: Incline at Mauch Chunk.]
On one occasion the brake for some reason would not work. The cars
just flew like an arrow. The man's hair stood up from fright and the
wind. Coming to a curve the cars kept straight on, ran down a bank,
dashed right into the end of a house and spilled their whole load in the
cellar. Probably no man ever laid in a winter's supply of coal so quickly
or so undesirably.
But how do we get the cars back? It is pleasant sliding down hill on a
rail, but who pulls the sled back? Gravitation. It is just as willing to
work both ways as one way.
Think of a great letter X a dozen miles long.
Lay it down on the side against three or four rough hills. Bend the X till
it will fit the curves and precipices of these hills. That is the double
track. Now when loaded cars have come down one bar of the X by
gravity, draw them up by a sharp incline to the upper end of the