No. 6. DEPARTMENT OF AGRICULTURE. 401 



While being neither a prophet nor the son of a prophet, your 

 Pomologist does register his guess that ten years from now, perhaps 

 much less, will see apples as generally and as carefully sized as we 

 now see practiced with oranges. The buying public will demand 

 it and it will pay to meet the demand. 



FERTILIZER CONDITIONS AND OUTLOOK: THE SYSTEM 



OF VALUATION. 



By DR. WM. FREAK, Chemist. 



The fertilizer situation in America is a beautiful example of the 

 close commercial interdependence of the nations of the world. As 

 soon as the European War began, export demand raised the prices 

 of our grain crops, our draught animals and presently of our cotton. 

 Then followed a heavy demand on our metal supplies, our automo- 

 biles, and then upon our chemical resources. Old factories were re- 

 opened and new factories of vast area were hastily built, and the 

 land was literally scraped to create the raw material stocks from 

 which the vast demand for finished chemical products, munitions and 

 medicines, might be supplied. 



* At once, the merchant fleets of Germany were gathered into safe 

 harbors at home and in neutral ports; and a large fraction of Eng- 

 land's transportation facilities were diverted from mercantile uses 

 to those of war transport. War risks increased insurance rates. 

 Here we were not only cut off from Germany's great system of chem- 

 ical works, but with the prices of chemicals in neutral countries in- 

 creased and our means of transporting them made scarce and ex- 

 pensive. 



We had been inclined to boast of our own natural resources, and 

 in the habit of thinking that they would, in time of need, make us 

 absolutely independent of all outside supplies. Now we find that 

 natural resources, however abundant and varied, serve no useful pur- 

 pose until developed. All the gold in Solomon's mines never paid a 

 store-bill, so long as it remained in the mine. In these days, large 

 natural resources cannot be developed or utilized until capital can 

 be enlisted, secured by proper legislation and assurance of suitable 

 national economic policies, and until our technical experts shall have 

 devised suitable systems of production. These preparations take 

 time. The war found us unprepared for its exigencies just as truly 

 as if a hostile fleet had appeared to land an army of 500,000 foemen 

 upon our shores. _ ^ .'-r^ii^.-^ 



26— G— 1915 



