Minutes. 21 



ments. Frequently a guarantee reads, nitrogen 2i to 3 per 

 cent. That means :2.V per cent. He comes within his guar- 

 antee. Moreover, another use of this guarantee is that ib 

 is a good way to get at whether it is a fair price or not. 

 You can figure out if you have one of the tables of valua- 

 tion which are published in the annual report of the sta- 

 tion — you can figure out whether the price he asks 

 corresponds to his analyses of the fertilizer. The better 

 way is not to buy so many tons of fertilizer but so many 

 pounds of valuable ingredients at so much a pound. 



For instance, if you were buying dried blood, instead of 

 paying the man $30 a ton with his guaranty that it contains 

 80 many pounds of dried blood you make an agreement 

 with him that you will pay him so much for every pound of 

 nitrogen or phorsphoric acid that there is contained in it, the 

 analysis to be made by some experiment station man. Then 

 you would pay for just what you got and would know just 

 what you got, and furthermore, if you wanted to compare 

 prices with some other manufacturer you could compare 

 them directly. If the offer is so many cents a pound, see 

 that the valuable ingredients compare closely and then you 

 have the thing fixed. You can tell which is making the 

 best offer. Finally, with regard to the laws of determining 

 the value of fertilizers. In some states manufacturers are 

 required to deposit with the state chemist a certified sample 

 of the goods they desire to sell. In other states these mat- 

 ters are managed in different ways. Some states require 

 every manufacturer to pay a certain sum before they can 

 sell their goods. In other states analysis fees are required 

 and the deposit fee besides. The provisions are various in 

 the different states. So far as I know there are no laws of 

 this sort in this state, and it has seemed to some of us 

 that it is time some such action should be taken in this di- 

 rection, now while the matter is in its infancy and before a 

 large trade is established in this state, and before manu- 

 facturers and dealers have got into ruts and think any in- 

 tervention is an imposition upon them. It would seem per- 

 fectly fair to establish some such law, and it is possible that 

 some such law will be brought up at the legislature next 



