Kankakee Valley Post, Volume 3, Number 4, DeMotte, Jasper County, 8 June 1933 — SALT’S HIGH PLACE IN WORLD TRADE [ARTICLE]

SALT’S HIGH PLACE IN WORLD TRADE

Medium of Exchange Long Before Gold. Less than a century ago a good buxom wife in the East Indies could be purchased for a handful of salt; many slaves which were brought to the United States from Africa were bought and paid for, not with gold, but salt, reports the Worcester Salt institute in outlining the many interesting activities carried on by man in seeking to satisfy his need for salt, remarking that the salt standard in the history of commerce antedated the gold standard. As a medium of exchange salt was widely used in many ancient countries. The Mogul conquerors of India made decrees thousands of years ago regulating the standard of salt that was used for money. In Asia and Africa cakes of salt were frequently employed as money. Up until comparatively recent times salt was used as a medium of exchange in the Shan markets in Indo-China. Besides being used as money, salt in days gone by was a powerful developer of commerce. Being essential to life, and unavailable to tribes remote from the sea, from which the substance was obtained by evaporation, trade routes were early developed to provide the transportation of salt. For hundreds of years a caravan route was maintained between Palmyra and Syrian ports. Even today much of rhe caravan traffic in the Sahara is largely in this precious commodity. The oldest road in Italy is not the Appian way, but the “Via Salaria,” the Salt road along which salt was anciently carried from the evaporating pits at Ostia to the Sabine territory. Indeed, according to historians, the largest city in the world, London, was first founded because of the salt trade, continues the Worcester Salt institute. During the earliest days of European history salt was sent from England to the continent. Cheshire and Worcestershire provided salt for Britain and Gaul, and the route for its transportation crossed the country in a southeasternly direction, crossing the Thames, then very shallow, at a ford where Westminster now stands. An inn was built to accommodate salt haulers when the river was too swollen to ford. From this humble beginning as a resting place for salt traders the great city of London resulted.