The Cavalcade of America, presented by DuPont. The Cavalcade of America Next week in Memphis, Tennessee, the annual Cotton Carnival will be celebrated. As a salute to King Cotton, the DuPont Cavalcade this evening presents Songs of the Mississippi, featuring many of the melodies which have been inspired by the traditions of the Great River. On previous programs we have told you the story of cotton and cellulose, and many people have written in to say that they enjoy the stories of chemistry given each week at the close of these broadcasts. Tonight we have something especially interesting, the story of a material so common you'll find it in every home, yet so uncommonly useful that many of the most important chemical products couldn't be made without it. It is the story of common salt. You'll hear some curious facts about the results of chemical research and how ordinary table salt helps the DuPont company to make good its pledge better things for better living through chemistry. Music On tonight's program the singers will include Everett Clark, Charles Harrison, Phil Dewey, and Alden Edkins with the orchestra under the direction of Don Voorhees. The DuPont Cavalcade moves forward. Music Day and night, through the parade of seasons and centuries, a mighty river crossed with an ageless murmur in the vast solitude of a dark and unknown continent. On rippled this glittering stream in a colorful primeval setting of gleaming blue skies, of lush green shorelands, and tall lonely forests, knowing only the cries of wild birds, the solitary song of an Indian flute. And then one day in June 1541, a band of Spanish adventurers and a few Indian guides stand wearily in mud-splashed tattered garments on the bank of this great picturesque river. At last, the river, Commander De Soto. Is it not a wonderful sight? In truth it is, Pedro. A river of dreams. Has it a name? The Indians name everything. Our guide would know. I shall ask Wild Eagle. Bid the men sit down and rest, Pedro. Soldiers, at ease. Wild Eagle, tell us the name you call this river at our feet. White Father, Red Man, Fall River, Algonquin name. Two words. What are the Algonquin words, Wild Eagle? Misi. That means great, Commander De Soto. Sipi. And that river? Misi Sipi. Great River. It is a great river. One can almost hear the whispers of the waves in its name. The Indian guides say there is corn to be had on the other shore. That's what I'm interested in, Commander De Soto. Aye, I learned about the corn at the village of Kithki. Therefore we must cross this river, Pedro. Hungry as we are, Commander, I fear we could never afford it. It is wide and treacherous. Nowhere in the hills and valleys of our beloved Spain have I ever seen such a river. If we attempt to cross, we shall surely drown. No, we shall cross it, Pedro. But to the Eternal Father, let us first sing a hymn of praise to commemorate our discovery of this beautiful stream in the Garden of the New World. Soldiers, arise. Good day, Commander De Soto. Aye. In honor of this great river, the Misi Sipi, let us sing the Te Deum. Te Deum la da mu Te Domino, confide in us Te Eterum afrem Omnitera veneracum Divi omnes angeli Divi in pedi et judi verset O te amem La la la la la La la la la la La la la la la Christened in song by white men, called the Misi Sipi by Hernando De Soto after its Algonquin name, these Spanish conquistadors discovered the southern waters of the Mississippi in 1541 at a point not far from the present site of Memphis, Tennessee. And as the years passed, the river flowing through the heart of our country has inspired men of every generation to compose humorous, classic, spiritual, and folk songs, always plaintively reminiscent of the stirring moods and legends of the Mississippi tradition. Taking its source in the silence of northern lakes and forests, in the natural grandeur and serenity of the northwest, the upper waters of the Mississippi were discovered in 1673 by Louis Joliet, a French explorer, and Jacques Marquette, a Jesuit missionary. It is a bright morning in spring as the canoes are paddled down the confluence of what is now the Wisconsin and Mississippi rivers. There is the great river, my father. The current looks dangerous. Its flows make it seem very wide. Oh, Louis, it has been a month since we left St. Ignace, and now our labor is rewarded. Look, there are some deer standing over there in the shadows, in the trees. Walnut, the oak, basswood. I must remember to jot it all down in my journal. Your journal. Must you always talk about that journal, my father? I can't stress it enough, Louis. In it will be recorded the history of our explorations. And today, I'll write in it the happiest incident of the voyage. And there is the incident before us. The great river, my father. These are the upper waters of a mighty stream, Louis. The river of a continent. And they flow south. Southward to the blue gulf and the distant sea. More than a century passed. The French established settlements north and west of the English colonies along the Atlantic seaboard. It is April 1682. A party of 50 men, all in canoes, led by the brave adventurer, René Robert Cabriolet-Cyr de la Salle, has floated the length of the Mississippi and reached the place where the great river divides to flow into the gulf. There, a landing is made. The Salle is talking with his friend, Tanti. It is the fulfillment of my dream, Tanti. All this country for our king. What monarch will reign over such an empire? This will make France the mightiest kingdom in the world. Is the column set up? Aye, Commander. In later years, we will mark the boundary of New France with a column of stone. Today, that sturdy tree must suffice. Mark it with a fleur de lis. The banner is back into the post, Monsieur. This merits a ceremony. Order the men to assemble. Men, gather around the court. And as a pair, draw swords. In the name of His Most Christian Majesty, Louis XIV, by virtue of our exploration, I take possession of this river and all surrounding territories, and christen it in his name, Louisiana. Music France, Spain, and England at different times ruled over the land boarding on the Mississippi. But the river has emerged with a tradition that is richly American. The Louisiana Purchase in 1803 gave to the United States a vast, uncharted wilderness and doubled the size of the newly born republic. As the decades passed, even as numerous river currents flow from the east to empty into the Mississippi, so also generations of settlers migrated from the Atlantic seaboard to build homes and cities along its fertile shores. Those were the days of plantation, of barges laden with pork, flour, and tobacco from Kentucky, cotton from Tennessee, cattle, corn, and horses from Illinois and Missouri. The days when picturesque cotton pickers sang river songs like, Roll out, heave that cotton, a seam that greets the eyes of Captain Bill Hawks and his daughter Sally as they stroll along a dock on the St. Louis waterfront. But I don't understand, Papa, why do you have to take your boat down to New Orleans tomorrow? You've only been home a week. Well, potatoes and apples don't keep long. Got a shipment sooner in an April shower. That's why I'm casting off tomorrow. Well, if you must, you must. Papa, who's that man standing there watching your men load the barge? Why, I don't know, daughter, taller than an Iowa cornstalk, ain't he? He has a face like a hawk. Seems fascinated with their singing. Yeah, I noticed that. How those boys sing. Papa, let's go over where we can hear them better. Before we see the sun, roll out all the cotton and get back in a run. The captain's in a hurry, I know what he means. Wants to beat the Sherlock down to New Orleans. Roll out, eat that cotton, roll out, eat that cotton, roll out, eat that cotton, make a long to stay. Come on, now, get that cotton. You know, Sally, that's one reason it never gets tiresome on the voyages down the river to Norlin. Just like the cotton pickers, the dock men are always singing like that. I couldn't take my eyes off that tall young fellow over there. He seemed to be smiling a while ago. Yeah, well, he's frowning now. Must have something on his mind. Think I'll speak to him. Howdy, stranger. Good morning, sir. You like to listen while my boys load that barge and sing? Yes, I do. When they sing about the Mississippi, it sort of seems like the voice of the river itself. Oh, I like this song, One More River to Cross. Yeah, they're mighty cheerful, but they work so hard. I have a deep sympathy for them. Someday, I hope I can do something to help them. Come to think of it, I've never seen you around here before, stranger. I reckon we better get acquainted. I'm Captain Horses. This is my daughter, Sally. Pleased to meet you, folks. Howdy. I come from up in Illinois, Salem Way. My name's Lincoln, Captain. Abe Lincoln. And that white river is Jordan. There's one wide river. There's one wide river to cross. There's one wide river. And that wide river is Jordan. There's one wide river. There's one wide river to cross. Music Music Music Music Music Music Music Music Music Music Music Music Music Music Music Music Music Music Music Music Music Generations of composers have captured the many moods and impressions of the Mississippi River. The vivacious spirit of our nation flows through every fiber of its melody, and its tempo beats with the surging might of the sweeping Mississippi's waves as they course downward from the northwest, past farms and forests, past low green hills and endless plains, past storied communities of the Deep South, whose nightlight twinkle like sounds of diadems on the brows of bluffs overlooking the river, down to the romantic city at the mouth of the Mississippi, New Orleans, and specified at Mardi Gras time in Pertigro Faye's Mississippi Suite in the selection Mardi Gras. Music Music Music Music Music Music Music Music Music Music Music Music Music Music Music Music Music Music Music And as people have done through centuries, an old man and his grandson walk along the riverbank. It is twilight, and the shadows are lengthening over the paths of Audubon Park in New Orleans. M-I-S-S-I-S-S-I-P-P-I That used to be so hard to spell, it almost made me cry. Do you know that song, Grandfather? I've heard it. I reckon I've heard most every song that's ever been written about the Mississippi. Sad songs, gay songs, songs to make you laugh, songs that make you want to cheer. And all Americans. There's nothing in our country more typically American than the Mississippi. It's seen a pageant of history, my boy. The longest shores are memories of great men, great deeds. It's the greatest river in the United States, isn't it? Yes, and part of its greatness is because nobody seems to think of it as just a river. It's a personality, old man river. He can be calm and helpful or cruel and relentless. He's been a factor in the building of our nation, and he's been a force of destruction. We love him and we fear him. We make songs about him. Yes. In some countries, he would have been immortalized in verse or in monuments. But here in America, he's been expressed in song. As an inspirational climax to all songs composed about this lordly stream, none more surely captures its character. None portrays so vividly in the surging flow of its melody the ageless sweep of the Mississippi's powerful waters better than the song from Jerome Kern's operetta Showboat, Old Man River. Old man river, old man river, he must know something, but don't say nothing. He just keeps rolling, he keeps on rolling along, rolling along. He don't lend aid, he don't lend funds, and in that ransom he's soon forgotten. But old man river, he just keeps rolling along, rolling along. You and me, we sweat and strain, but you're aching in a rack with pain. Did that part? Yes. Did that part? Yes. Little, little drunk in your land in the dirt, wrong in hearing and sick or crying, I'm tired of living and scared of dying. I'm tired of living and sick or crying. Since that day in 1541 when De Soto and his men sang a hymn of praise on seeing it for the first time, men have lifted up their voices in song to the great American river. DuPont salutes these authors and composers of song to the Mississippi who have perpetuated these never forgotten traditions in the cavalcade of America. In ancient times, salt was so scarce as to be almost a luxury, and it formed the chief article of trade in many countries. Cakes of salt have even been used as money in such countries as Abyssinia and Tibet. The word salary, a pleasant word to all of us when our paychecks are due, comes from the Latin word salarium, meaning the wage given to Roman soldiers for the purpose of buying salt. Salt is even more important today, but the reasons for its importance have changed. Today, vast quantities of salt are consumed in making many useful chemical products. At Niagara Falls, New York, the DuPont Company's R&H Chemicals Department has a factory that uses salt as its chief raw material. First of all, DuPont chemists put electricity to work breaking up salt into two valuable chemical elements, chlorine and sodium. The chlorine is used for bleaching cloth and paper and for purifying water, a great safeguard to public health. One use of the sodium is to make sodium cyanide for electroplating, the process that produces shiny metals such as you have on your car. Sodium cyanide also is used for the extraction of gold, for the hardening of steel, and for fumigating. Sodium likewise goes into the making of sodium perborate, a useful antiseptic and the main ingredient of many tooth powders. In addition, perborate and sodium peroxide, another salt derivative, are used for bleaching textiles. Still other useful chemical products are made at this DuPont plant from chlorine derived from salt. For example, methyl chloride, an unusually quick-acting refrigerant. From salt also a number of solvents are made for removing grease from leather, metal, and wool, for extracting oils, and for another use more familiar to you, dry cleaning. Per-chlorethylene and trichlorethylene, marketed under the trademarks per-clean and triclean, are especially fine dry cleaning fluids. Manufacturing these products in the DuPont Company's Niagara Falls plant means jobs for some 1,400 people who earn a total of $3 million a year. Many other people are kept busy supplying various raw materials. 375 freight cars full are shipped in each month, and between 400 and 500 freight cars full of finished products leave the plant every month. So there's work for railroad people too. This whole story of salt and the many useful products chemists make with it adds up to another illustration of the DuPont pledge. Better things for better living through chemistry. The colonization of California, the story of the California missions and the Franciscan friar, Junipero Serra, will be the subject of our broadcast when next week at the same time DuPont again presents the Cavalcade of America. This is the Columbia Broadcasting System.
