No. 6. DEPARTMENT OF AGRICULTURE. 887 



fcsiiep'Ui'd, i^r. St. Julien Ravenel and other scientilic men. it was 

 not until 1867, when reaction from the etfects of the war began 

 to set in, that attention was then directed toward the development 

 of these dei^osits. In 1867, the Charleston, South Carolina, Mining 

 and Manufacturing Company was organized to work the land de 

 posits. A few Charleston and Philadelphia capitalists furnished th«. 

 funds and Professor Holmes was elected President. The principal 

 office was in Charleston, but a branch agency was established in 

 Philadelphia. In 1870, the capital of the company was |800,000, and 

 is at present |1,000,000. Many difficulties were met and overcome 

 in this work, and much money was sunk, because the field of work 

 was a new and untried one, and experience had to be gained by 

 great loss of time and a large expenditure. In 1867, sixteen barrels 

 of the rock were shipped to Philadelphia by Prof. Holmes for general 

 distribution, and the first parcel of super-phosphates (commercial 

 fertilizers) was manufactured by Messrs. Potts & Klett, of that city. 

 The first cargo of 100 tons was shipped on the 14th of April, 1868, to 

 Baltimore, Md., by John R. Dukes, president of the Wando Co., 

 of Charleston." Prof. Holmes thus describes the reception of the 

 rock in the markets: ''The arrival of the first cargo in Philadelphia 

 caused no little excitement in mercantile circles, especially among 

 the manufacturers of fashionable fertilizers, and in a very short 

 time after the chemists of that city, New York and Baltimore had 

 pronounced it a true bone phosphate rock, the phosphate fever be- 

 came epidemic in these cities." 



The organization of companies to mine the river deposits followed 

 close upon that of the land companies, the Marine and Oak Point 

 mines being the pioneers. With the beginning of river mining, in 

 1870, the State, through the legislature, claimed control of the 

 navigable streams, and by act of the assembly, imposed a royalty 

 of .^1.00 per ton on all rock removed from these streams. A charter 

 was granted to the Marine and Eiver Company, which gave it the 

 exclusive rights to all the streams of the State upon the filing of a 

 $50,000 bond and the punctual payment of royalty, quarterly. In 

 1870, three years after the commencement of mining operations, there 

 were at work two river companies, five land companies and six com- 

 panies manufacturing the rock into commercial fertilizers. The 

 Marine and River Company leased a part of their territory to the 

 Coosa w Mining Company, an organization composed of Baltimoreans 

 and Charlestonians, and organized in May, 1870. This has been 

 the most successful of all the river mining companies, because the 

 most persistent. At the end of the first year's experience it had 

 expended all its money and had nothing left except a dredge and 

 some experience. Many of the parties interested favored suspend- 



