274 ANNUAL REPORT OF THE Off. Doc. 



fertilizer supply. Time was when besides manure, the more soluble 

 part of which carries a relatively good proportion of potash, wood 

 ashes gave us about the only other supply. But now, we burn coal, 

 instead of wood, and that domestic supply has all but disappeared. 

 Cottonseed hull ashes became somewhat prominent, but the New 

 England tobacco growers took all that the South would sell. 



Practically all the potash in our fertilizers has, for years, been the 

 product of the governmentally controlled German potash mines. 

 We may approximate the quantity of these salts consumed in Penn- 

 sylvania on the basis of our annual fertilizer tonnage reports to the 

 State Department of Agriculture and of the average composition of 

 the several classes of mixed fertilizers analyzed. These figure, for 

 1913, together with those for potash salts sold unmixed to the con- 

 sumer, are equivalent to 30,771 tons of high grade salts, together 

 with 3,362 tons of kainit sold as such. Of course, it is not meant 

 that the potash of mixed fertilizers all comes from high grade salts. 

 Much of it doubtless was introduced in kainit and other lower grade 

 products. These figures represent 14,300 pounds of actual potash. 

 The potash salt imports such as are used in fertilizer manufacture 

 were, in 1913-1914 equivalent to 250,000 tons of actual potash. From 

 which it follows that we use one-twentieth of the total import. 



The war, when it broke out, found most of our manufacturers quite 

 well stock with potash salts, but the problem for the future 

 was dark and difficult. The call to arms had, according to credible 

 information, cut down the producing capacity of the potash works 

 to one-half the normal, Germany had always used herself a large 

 fraction of the output. Her supervision of agriculture was as much 

 a part of her war plans as that over her arms factories and trans- 

 portation facilities. With the growing prospect of a long war ahead 

 of her, it was uncertain how much of her diminished product she 

 would reserve to insure her food supplies for the coming year. Al- 

 though England declared no blockade, her dominant fleet cut down 

 ocean transportation, the use of mines increased carriage risks and 

 ocean insurance and freight rates went up correspondingly. To meet 

 this situation the principal fertilizer manufacturers decided to eke 

 out the potash supplies in hand, and to do it by cutting off the 

 direct sale of potash salts to the consumer, and by making no fertil- 

 izer that contained more than 3.5% of potash. In latter August, 

 September and October, sales of potash salts were here and there re- 

 ported at prices of $100 to $120 a ton for muriate. Many of the 

 manufacturers remixed the goods already put up for the market, 

 though the time of contract delivery as only two or three weeks dis- 

 tant. The Department required proper notice to the consumer of 

 all cases in which, in consequence of this conservative policy, the 

 potash supply in the goods was reduced below the previous guaranty 

 of the brand in question. 



The net result of these conditions was not a large number of 

 modified guaranties, but a very marked reduction in the number of 

 brands offered for sale. The average richness in potash of the com- 

 plete and rock-and-potash fertilizers examined in the Fall of 1914 

 was about 1% less than for the Fall of 1913, Because of the sale 

 of Spring stocks and the failure to remix in all cases, the average 

 potash richness of these two classes of goods was considerably above 

 the 3,5% maximum fixed by the manufacturers; but there were few 



