There are many ways to look at the world, as it is, as it was and as it could be. If you look at the world as is was you need to find some very common elements which all societies need to live and evolve. A very interesting book is called Salt – A World History written by Mark Kurlansky published by Walker and Company, NY, 2002. For generations of people, the table salt which is found on many dining room  tables was one of the most important drivers of the world. Although salt is found almost everywhere in the world  for centuries salt was desperately searched for, traded for and fought for.

In San Francisco, the gold rush made California a state, the mining continued with Silver and the Comstock mines. To mine silver salt is needed to separate the minerals. San Francisco Bay has a marshland which is ideal to making salt. Pools were made with windmills pumping water from one pool to another, the water evaporates during the summer, the brine crystallizes and salt is the result. The process well-known from ancient times was beginning to be understood why it does what it does.

The science or chemistry was slowly beginning to be understood. Through looking for salt, people began to understand the earth or geology. In terms of chemistry, salt is sodium chloride. The ratio is 40% sodium (the positive) and 60% chloride (the negative). When you go to the supermarket, you might pick up a Birdseye product which uses refrigeration and vacuum processing which means we did not need salt for preserving. Although there are plenty of delicious tasting foods adding salt makes a better taste. The chemical industry breaks down the sodium and chloride to make the thousands of products which we use everyday. The Chemical industry needs relatively inexpensive hydro, raw material of salt, water and distribution channels to sell to other industries and one can easily see why high returns are made in the chemical industry.

Over the years, there has been much politics involved with salt including India and Gandhi, where the British ruled the country and had a monopoly on salt. Understanding the basic things in people’s lives is understanding geopolitics.

The two biggest producers of salt in the US are Morton’s and Cargill. One of Morton’s invention was to add magnesium carbonate to table salt which kept the salt from sticking together. If you buy salt to throw on the sidewalk or your driveway, the rocks stick together. (51% of the use of salt is used on the roads) However since 1911 the table salt does not. One of the places where the road salt for the northeast comes from is Great Inagua Island in the Bahamas where Morton’s harvests the sea on 30,000 acres; Morton has mines in Kansas (which has estimated life span of 250,000 years); Cargill has a mine near Detroit, Michigan and Avery Island in Louisiana which also the home of McIlhenry’s Tabasco sauce.

Linking to dividend paying stocks, history teaches us we changed over the years because now we take things for granted, which used to be life and death. To understand history is to understand the little things in life which are important, it is also to understand the movement of capital into those important elements. Follow the flow of capital, what is important today, it changes as prices change as technology changes. Some is better, some will be kept on a smaller basis, we are people.

There are more questions than answers, till the next time – to raising questions.