516 STATE BOARD OF AGRICULTURE. 



LICENSED BRANDS. 



Dufing the year, 1920, 37 manufacturers and fertilizer companies licensed 

 426 brands for sale in Michigan. One new company, The Southern Fer- 

 tilizer and Chemical Company, registered 20 brands during the fall season. 

 Of this number, however, 12 were not shipped into the State. The U. S. 

 Gypsum Company, Chicago, 111., and the R. H. Hoover Laboratories, Inc., 

 Freeport, 111., licensed "Ben Franklin Agricultural Gypsum" and "Plant- 

 life' ' respectively, after the regular fertilizer season had closed. No samples 

 of either brands have been found on the markets and they are not included 

 in the tables of analyses. _ 



Attention is called to the fact that the fertilizer law covers only those 

 materials which are sold, offered or exposed for sale Avithin the State, the 

 retail price of which is $10.00 or more per ton. Manufacturers residing 

 outside the State may ship direct to the consumer without paying the license 

 fee but the party making the purchase receives no protection under the law. 

 If the sale of fertilizer to be shipped direct to the consumer is made by an 

 agent or representative of the manufacturer while in the State, the act is 

 considered as one of actually offering the material itself for sale, and the 

 fertilizer then becomes subject to the requirements of the law just as surely 

 as though the fertilizer were actually brought into the State and then sold. 

 Consequently, an agent of a fertilizer company is technically violating the 

 law when he solicits or accepts orders for any unlicensed fertilizer, while in 

 the State. 



COLLECTION OF SAMPLES. 



The collection of samples was made during the spring and fall shipping 

 seasons by inspectors appointed by the State Board of Agriculture. 



All sections of the State in which fertilizers are used to any extent were 

 visited, and 907 samples were secured from stocks being offered for sale 

 by dealers. For this purpose a specially constructed tube is used, which 

 permits of securing a core from the entire length of the bag. An official 

 sample consists of the cores taken from not less than ten separate sacks of 

 the same brand. The ten or more separate cores are mixed together, placed 

 in a stout sack, tied, sealed and forwarded to the laboratory for analysis. 



During the year 71 registered brands were not shipped into the State. 

 It was formerly the custom, whenever we failed to find a brand on the mar- 

 ket, to analyze the sample forwarded by the manufacturer, as required by 

 law, at the time of applying for the license. It has long been known that 

 these samples were generally, if not always, made up in the laboratories 

 of the companies and were not, therefore, representative of the product as 

 put on the market. For this and other reasons we have discontinued this 

 practice and in this bulletin the brands not represented by samples are listed 

 in their proper places but are not given a laboratory number and only the 

 guaranteed analysis is shown. 



In many cases several samples of the same brand were drawn and ana- 

 lyzed. This, of course, greatly increases the work in the laboratory but it 

 is the only way by which we can ascertain if the brands are running uni- 

 form. If only one sample were analyzed, or if several samples were taken 

 and composited before being analyzed, variations in the composition would 

 not be detected. 



