, had
not done so what possible hope could the prosalt cranks offer for their
panacea now the rampant grass was grown to its present proportions?

The salt argument cut society in half. Learned doctors battled in the
columns of scientific journals. Businessmen dictated sputtering letters
to their secretaries. Housewives wrote newspapers or argued heatedly in
the cornergrocery. Radiocommentators cautiously skirted the edge of
controversy and more than one enthusiast had to be warned by his
sponsor. Fistfights started in taverns over the question and judicious
bartenders served beer without offering the objectionable seasoning with
it.

The _Intelligencer_, at the start, was vehemently antisalt. "Is there an
American Cato," Le ffacase asked, "to call for the final ignominy
suffered by Carthage to be applied, not to the land of an enemy, but to
our own?" Shortly after this editorial, entitled "Carthage, California"
appeared, the _Intelligencer_ swung to the opposite side and Le ffacase
offered the prosalt argument under the heading "Lot's Wife."

The Daughters of the American Revolution declared themselves in favor of
salt and refused the use of Constitution Hall to an antisalt meeting.
Stung, the Central Executive Committee of the Communist party circulated
a manifesto declaring the use of salt was an attempt to encircle, not
the grass, for that was a mere subterfuge of imperialism, but the Soviet
Union; and called upon all its peripheral fringe to write their
congressmen and demonstrate against the saline project. From India the
aged Mohandas Gandhi asked in piping tones why such a valuable adjunct
was to be wasted in rich America while impoverished ryots paid a harsh
tax on this necessity of life? And the Council of Peoples' Commissars,
careless of the action of the American Stalinists, offered to sell the
United States all its surplus salt. The herringpicklers of Holland
struck in a body while the American salt refiners bid as one to produce
on a costplus basis.

This last was a clincher and the obscurantic antisalts received the
deathblow they richly deserved. The Communist party reversed themselves
swiftly. All respectable and patriotic people lined up behind salt. With
such popular unanimity apparent, the government could do no less than
take heed. A band twenty miles wide, stretching from Oceanside to the
Salton Sea, from the Salton Sea to the little town of Mojave and from
there to Ventura, was marked out on m