"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 rollers, on the way to the packing rooms in the large store-house, passed through a long system of sheet-iron conduits, which were well heated by the concentrated rays of the sun from the mirrors and sunglasses. So well did the drying rollers do their work, that by the time the cubes had reached the store-house, and were delivered by the elevators into the storing-bins in the packing house, they were reduced to a dry, hard kernel. They had lost three-fourths in bulk, and about the same proportion in weight. "The funnel-shaped bottoms to the storing-bins were so arranged as to be above the long rows of packing tables. A series of graduated spouts, delivered the cured vegetables to the packers, who, standing or sitting as they might prefer, could, with but little effort and much speed, fill the prepared boxes with the little cubes. "These boxes, of a uniform size and shape, were made from thick layers of heavy straw-paper, made stiff and firm under high pressure. The farm in manufacturing them, was able to utilize large quantities of surplus straw from the grain fields, which could not be used as forage. In the corners of the boxes, between layers of paper, while they were being molded into shape, were inserted small, triangular pieces of wood. These bevel-shaped strips were cut six inches in length, just the depth of the boxes, in which they served as upright cornerposts. The shallow covers fitted each box with a telescope joint.