quickly into harmony with a rate of progress
demanded by the twentieth century.

"I will take up another question. It is in connection with the large
amount of cultivated ground devoted to vegetables. How do you manage to
make it profitable to grow such a quantity of perishable things?"

"That is another important question, which will require an answer so
lengthy, that perhaps you may grow weary before I have finished.
However, I will try to be brief. During the past year, we have taken
from the ground devoted to vegetable growing, more than 100,000 bushels
of cabbage, cauliflower, onions, beets, mangel-wurzel, carrots,
parsnips, salsify, potatoes, sweet-potatoes, cassava, turnips, kohlrabi
and artichokes. The best part of the story is, that this heavy crop has
proved profitable, to a degree far beyond our expectations! As a rule,
this class of vegetables, so heavy and so perishable, cannot be
profitably grown in large quantities, except in locations near a large
market town. This advantage, Solaris does not possess. To overcome this
difficulty, was an additional task, which must be conquered, by the
allied forces of co-operative thinking and co-operative working. In the
solution of this puzzling question which was finally reached, the great
mirrors and burning glasses of the Solaris concentrators, were again
called upon to play an important part.

"The first necessity, was to reduce the weight of the vegetables, and at
the same time, to arrest all tendency to decay. The second was to
protect them from the attack of insects, by placing them in neat,
strong, insect-proof packages.

"A large curing establishment was built and equipped with machinery;
most of which was made at Solaris, from especially devised patterns.
Convenient trolley lines, connected the curing-house with the fields.
The vegetables, crisp and fresh from the ground, were quickly brought to
the washing machines, on trains of cars laden with shallow trays, which
permitted them to be swiftly handled without bruising. In these
machines, they were thoroughly cleansed, scraped, and freed from tops,
rootlets and imperfections. This process complete, they were placed in
trays on traveling carriers, which delivered them to the dicing
machines. In the dicing machines, they were soon reduced to inch-cubes.

"In passing from these machines, the cubes fell on traveling screens of
fine wire, which formed the first of a long series of drying rollers.
The drying r