The cholera most forcibly teaches us our mutual connection. Nothing shows more powerfully the duty of every man to look after the needs of others.

He built the Congregational church which is now Saltaire United Reformed Church at his own expense in 1858–59 and donated the land on which the Wesleyan Chapel was built by public subscription in 1866–68. After working for two years as a wool-stapler in Wakefield he became his father's partner in the business of Daniel Salt and Son. He was the second mayor in office from 1848–49 and was later Deputy Lieutenant for the West Riding of Yorkshire.

Smoke and pollution emanated from mills and factory chimneys and Salt tried unsuccessfully to clean up the pollution using a device called the Rodda Smoke Burner. Around 1850 he decided to build a mill large enough to consolidate his textile manufacture in one place but he "did not like to be a party to increasing that already over-crowded borough" and bought land three miles from the town in Shipley next to the River Aire the Leeds and Liverpool Canal and the Midland Railway and began building in 1851. (The discovery was described by Charles Dickens in slightly fictionalised form in Household Words).