Under the burning sun of California's Mojave Desert last week, power shovels chewed into a sticky, greyish substance at the bottom of a quarter-mile-wide, 137-ft.-deep crater in the desert floor. In the past year huge machines had scraped off 7,000,000 tons of earth to expose this mineral prize: the world's largest known deposit of borax. To the housewife, borax is merely a household cleanser, 'but to industry it is the chief source of boron, a new wonder element and Jack-of-all-trades that can be used in everything from drugs and plastics to the...
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