Salt and the salt industry

by Albert Frederick Calvert

Groups and gangs of miners, naked to the hips, are everywhere busy with pick, mallet, and wedge, with which they block out and separate the salt slabs from the solid mass. The process has the simplicity of the age in which it was first employed. The blocks are marked out on the surface of the rock by grooves. One side is then deepened to the required thickness, and the face is split off by wedges inserted under the block. It is then divided into pieces of 100 lb. each and removed to the shafts, where it is hoisted, stage after stage, to the surface. The number of labourers continually engaged is from one to two thousand. The miners, who are muscular, healthy-looking men, are divided into gangs. The work is carried on in shifts of six hours each, and in each shift a gang will quarry out about 1,000 lb. weight of salt.

The Letow ball-room, which lies at a depth of 216 ft. below the surface, dates from 1750, and has been the scene of many Royal visits and splendid entertainments. One end of the spacious chamber is adorned with a colossal Austrian eagle, and in an alcove at the opposite end is set up a crystal throne. The giant chamber which bears the name of Michalowice, a fearsome and stupendous excavation, was completed in 1701, as the result of forty years of continuous labour. It is 59 ft. long by 92 ft. broad, and the roof, supported by a wooden framework, has a height of 118 ft. The chamber is lit by a salt chandelier furnished with 300 electric bulbs. The Francis Joseph ball-room is another of the wonders of this subterranean city. It is an immensely large and immensely lofty apartment, lit by six large chandeliers fashioned of crystalline rock-salt. Salt statues of Vulcan and Neptune, which adorn the hall, reflect the electric light from myriad brilliant points and angles, and contribute to the general impression of flashing splendour which the scene conveys. Beneath these great reception rooms, are smaller halls, each beautiful in itself, bearing the names of royal or princely personages. Massive pyramids of salt and sculptured monuments, with carved inscriptions, perpetuate the memories of Emperors and Empresses of Austria, or commemorate their visits to the mines. Near to the Letow ball-room is the celebrated St. Anthony’s Chapel, which was hewn in 1698, and for upwards of two centuries has been the resort of thousands of the devout. The vestibule in the chapel consists of a symmetrical archway with figures at the sides. The interior is beautified by an altar bearing a sculptured representation of the Crucifixion, and flanked by salt effigies of kneeling monks. Hard by St. Anthony’s Chapel a magnificent shrine is hewn in one of the passages, peopled with figured saints, which leads to the Queen’s Chapel, with the superbly-chiselled altar and its view of Bethlehem carved in the solid salt.

The central railway station in the third storey, and the great restaurant, with its ponderous pillars and its long vista of latticed galleries, are among the many marvels of the mines, but nothing it contains is so wonderful as the subterranean lake, lying 700 ft. below the surface of the earth. The waters of the lake are dark, thick, and heavy, and as the boat glides over its surface the slumberous wavelets roll up against the sides of the grotto with a ghost-like swish. A ponderous solitude over weighs all. The Styx alone of all the legendary rivers of death could rival this in stillness. The boat is guided through the Stephanie and Rudolf grottoes by ropes running on pulleys along the sides of the curious craft, and the boatman, with his hands resting on the stern, pushes it with his feet braced against the rope. Of the sixteen lakes in different parts of the mine, this is the only one upon which visitors are allowed to go. The report of a gun fired in the centre of the lake fills the vault with long and lingering echoes, and the voice of the boatman sounds like a giant’s voice uprising from the depths of chaos.

The illumination of the mine is arranged according to a regular tariff based on the number of visitors sharing the expense. For any number of persons up to twenty, the illumination, which comprehends the employment of over a thousand candles and electric lamps, costs about ninety shillings, but for an additional sovereign, which is charged when a party numbers over thirty persons, the whole mine becomes a blaze of light.

INTERIOR OF SALT MINE AT SLANICU, RUMANIA

This famous mine has been worked since the time of the Romans.

Serious calamities at Wieliczka are now practically unknown, owing to the care exercised by the officials, but minor accidents are unavoidable. Some few years ago a huge mass of rock-salt, weighing some 200 tons, fell from the roof of one of the chambers; in 1868 the mines were flooded by the bursting of a subterranean salt lake; and a fire in 1815 resulted in the loss of several hundred lives. The early history of the mines contains the record of several terrible disasters, including an incendiary fire in 1510, which caused a great number of deaths, and another fire in 1644, which raged for over a year, and consumed all the people, horses, and mules who were in the mine when the fire occurred.

The working of the three great Rumanian salt deposits present other examples of the persistent survival of ancient methods, but it must be admitted that an attempt was made at one time to introduce modern machinery. It was demonstrated that the machine produced more salt in a given time, and that the waste of about 25 per cent. of the salt attendant upon manual labour and the use of picks was saved, but as the supply of salt is practically inexhaustible, and there is no limit set upon the time of winning it, and as man-power, especially convict man-power, is cheaper than machinery, the authorities soon reverted to the old system. In the Slanic mine, in which the salt is crystalline, white, and almost absolutely pure, the free labourers, of whom about 500 are employed, are divided into gangs of six men. Each man takes an oblong piece of the floor of the mine, about as big as an ordinary tombstone, and, using his pick, scoops round it a narrow groove about 5 in. deep. This done, he summons the rest of his gang, and, standing beside him on the slab, they raise and bring down their picks simultaneously at the word of command. Force is necessary, but rhythmical accuracy in the planting of the blow is more essential, and by long practice the men have become so extraordinarily expert that they scarcely ever diverge a hair’s breadth from the point at which they aim. In a few minutes the persistent blows detach the slab, which the six men raise with the aid of a lever. The gang proceed from slab to slab until all six have been detached and lifted, after which each man breaks his own slab into chunks and loads it into a truck for removal to the shaft, through which it is hauled to the surface. An expert miner’s earnings at this work range from half a crown to three shillings a day.

The convicts employed in the Tirgu-Ocna and Ocnele-Mari mines are paid from sixpence to eightpence a day for their work, and, save that liberty and the hospitality of the local taverns are denied them, their condition is little worse than that of the free labourers. As capital punishment does not obtain in Rumania, the convict miners include murderers, brigands, and the worst class of criminals, and armed soldiers escort them to and fro between the prison and the mine, and remain on guard while they are at work. Dashes for liberty used to be common, and organized attempts to escape have also been attempted, but now, on the first sign of suspicious behaviour on the part of the convicts, the order is given for the whole gang to throw themselves flat upon the ground. As those who disobey the order are immediately shot, instantaneous compliance with the command is usually observed. On one occasion a body of disaffected convicts had recourse to a form of passive resistance, and when the day’s work was over they refused to leave the mine. The guards and overseers thereupon withdrew and left the mutineers to reflect in an intolerably salt atmosphere upon the virtues of fresh water, of which they had no supply. After two days of torture, the men capitulated. But the work of superintending the convicts in the mines is a delicate and dangerous task. The overseers are compelled to mix with the men, and it is but the work of a few silent minutes for a gang to overpower an unpopular official and squeeze the breath out of his body. As the murder is a communal affair, and the practice of making an example of one man pour l’encourager les autres is not adopted in Rumania, the extent of punishment inflicted upon the whole gang is less than would be meted out to individual offenders. As the salt reserves in the three principal mines of Rumania are estimated at 8,774,000,000 tons, and the annual extraction has never exceeded 150,000 tons, it follows that, at the present rate of progress, the deposits cannot be exhausted for several millenniums.