THE CONFERENCE PROPER 



33 



Following the presentation of Mr. 

 Lay's report, Doctor Van Hise, of the 

 University of Wisconsin, representing 

 the Wisconsin State Conservation 

 Commission, read the report of that 

 Commission on the subject of lands. 

 Doctor Van Hise's address bore more 



particularly upon the subject of phos- 

 phate in the lands, the line of his argu- 

 ment being the reduced fertility of 

 farming lands and the necessity for 

 conserving the elements of fertility for 

 the safeguarding of American agri- 

 cultural interests. 



ADDRESS OF DR. VAN HISE 



REPRESENTING the Conservation Com- 

 mission of Wisconsin, I am requested, in 

 the absence of the Governor, to speak 

 on one subject of the work of that Conserva- 

 tion Commission which is apropos to the 

 subject under discussion this afternoob — the 

 matter of lands. I might speak of the forest 

 work, but that work will come up tomorrow 

 and therefore I shall say nothing in reference 

 to it, although the work of the Conservation 

 Commission upon that subject is probably the 

 most important work it has done. 



Tlie subject to which I shall call your 

 attention for a few moments is _Uiat of the 

 phosphate in the land. I select this par- 

 ticular subject because it shows the interre- 

 lation of the work of the State with reference 

 to this subject. You may wonder why I, in 

 Wisconsin, a State which has no phosphate 

 deposits, should be especially interested in 

 this question; but this is a question in which 

 every State is interested, whether phosphates 

 are present or not. Of the three elements of 

 fertility in the soil which are most likely to 

 be lacking nitrogen, potassium and phosphorus 

 are the important ones. Nitrogen may be ob- 

 tained by methods which I need not "discuss; 

 potassium is present to the extent of 0.2 or 

 0.3 per cent, and even if the deposits of nature 

 are used up, we shall be able, by sufficient ex- 

 penditure, to use the original rocks as the 

 source qf our potassium to fertilize the soil. 

 Phosphorus is present in the original rocks to 

 the extent of only o.ii of one per cent. It is 

 the element which is most crucial in the 

 matter of soil fertility. Mr. Hill, at the con- 

 ference last spring, told of the decreasing 

 productivity of the grain fields, not only of 

 the Northwest, but of the various parts of 

 the country. The most important chemical 

 factor in the matter is the depletion in phos- 

 phate. You who are familiar with the situa- 

 tion in the upper Mississippi valley may think 

 that those wonderfully fertile States have a 

 sufficient amount of this element, and yet an 

 investigation recently made by the Agricul- 

 tural and Experimental Association of Ohio, 

 Illinois and Wisconsin, shows that already in 

 these rich States that element has largely 

 been extinguished. So far as I know the only 

 quantitative studies which have been made 

 are in Wisconsin. There the fields which 

 have been cropped for fifty years, as com- 

 pared with the original soil, have lost one- 



third of their phosphates. The Director of 

 soil work in Illinois is here to speak for his 

 Commission and will su'pplement my state- 

 ment in reference to that State. 



There is absolutely no way in which we 

 can increase our supply of phosphate. If the 

 loss for the United States has been as much, 

 or one-half as much, as it has been for the 

 State of Wisconsin, for the cropped fields for 

 fifty years, a simple calculation shows that 

 the entire product of our mines would be re- 

 quired for one liundred years to restore to the 

 soils their original fertility in this element. 

 And yet one gentleman who has made an esti- 

 mate of the deposit of phosphate in Florida 

 arrd South Carolina and Tennessee and given 

 rough estimates as to the probable amount 

 that may become available in the West, leads 

 us to the conclusion that the supply of this 

 element is inadequate, being sufficient to last 

 for only fifty years. 



Last month there was an announcement of 

 the Franco-American Consolidated Phosphate 

 Company, the capital of which is almost ex- 

 clusively held abroad. This phosphate com- 

 pany has already purchased a large portion of 

 the richest phosphate lands in Tennessee, 

 which contains the largest supplies of phos- 

 phate in the United States, with the exception 

 of these western deposits. What is the pur- 

 pose of obtaining these lands? Manifestly, it 

 is to ship our phosphates abroad to restore 

 the depleted soils of Germany, France and 

 Spain, for all three of those countries are 

 represented in the capital of that company. 

 Gentlemen, it seems to me there should be a 

 law which would prohibit the exportation of 

 a single pound of phosphate from this coun- 

 try. We do not want an export duty in this 

 case. \Ve want prohibition, the same kind of 

 prohibition with reference to phosphate that 

 has been adopted in the South lately with 

 reference to another matter — absolute prohi- 

 bition. To allow these deposits of phosphate 

 to go out of this country is nothing short of 

 agricultural suicide. 



Under our modern conditions we are losing 

 enormous quantities of these fertilizers. The 

 investigations which have been made in Wis- 

 consin by the agricultural stations with refer- 

 ence to this question, show that a large propor- 

 tion of fertilizers is allowed to go down by the 

 wash into the river and thence into the sea. Un- 

 der our modern sewerage system, by which 

 we dump into the rivers the sewerage, we also 



