402 ANNUAL REPORT OF THE Off. Doc. 



England established her so-called blockade of German ports, and 

 Germany put an embargo on potash export — partly to protect her own 

 food supply, partly to embarrass crop production in enemies' countries 

 and doubtless to cut off the supply from which potassium chlorate 

 and related explosives might be made for the use of the enemy. Mur- 

 iate of potash, worth |3S. to |40., on our markets in August, 1914, by 

 January 1915, had jumped to |60. ; by March, to $114. by June, to 

 |225 ; by November to |260. ; and a month later, to |245 ; and now are 

 announced small lot sales at $375. to |600. a ton. Our munition mak- 

 ers have far outbid ourselves and the fertilizer makers who work for 

 us, and have gone out in the neutral world, as far as Java, to gather 

 in the available small stocks of potash salts. All the other potash 

 salts followed the muriate in disappearance from the market and in 

 elevation of price, although their price levels did not reach that 

 of the muriate. 



Meanwhile there has been much talk about the great stocks of po- 

 tash in our feldspar and other potash silicates and, here and there, 

 somebody has gone to the expense of grinding fine some of these rocks, 

 a process that makes them little more valuable as potash foods for 

 plants than so much sea sand. Our geologists have bored the West 

 for saline potash deposits, without finding anything of much econ- 

 omic promise. Several heavily capitalized concerns have begun to 

 work Utah alunite deposits for both potash and alumina, without 

 any promise of a protective tariff for potash, after the war, and with- 

 out a certain market for their alumina output. The coastal waters 

 of California bear great crops of giant kelp rich enough in potash to 

 equal in number production our usual potash imports; but Cali- 

 fornia legislation offers little protection to capital that might be 

 gathered to utilize the marine products within California territory. 

 So our potash production has been limited to a little dried kelp and 

 saline kelp extract made by several small concerns, a carload or two 

 of potash derived from alunite, and some that has been extracted by 

 washing the flue dust of cement factories. 



How about our phosphoric acid and nitrogen supplies? We have 

 abundance of phosphate rock, but war conditions caused unsettled 

 mine operations. Stocks are low, but prices have held at about |3.62| 

 a ton for South Carolina kiln-dried rock, and at |5. to $6.50 for Ten- 

 nessee, 80% rock. We use most of our phosphorus in the form, how- 

 ever, of acid phosphate. The price per unit of 20 pounds of available 

 phosphoric acid held firm at 47.5 cents from January to September 

 1915, when it began to increase. In October last, it was 77.5 cents, 

 and in December, 82.5 cents. Now, the wholesale price of 16% rock, 

 held firm at about $14.00 a ton, and our retail prices will probably 

 run from $18. to $20. for goods of this grade. 



This price change in acid pthosphate is due not to the raw phos- 

 phate, but to the sulphuric acid. We made more sulphuric acid in 

 1915 than ever before, but the demands of the munition makers out- 

 ran the supplies and prices went up. Our surphuric acid makers have 

 obtained their sulphur in small part from the brimstone of Sicily, and 

 the deep sulphur deposits of Calcasieu, Louisiana, but chiefly from 

 pyrites. Newfoundland, Virginia and Huelva, Spain, were our con- 

 siderable sources of supply, especially Spain. Furnaces adapted to 

 pyrites can not quickly be changed to burn sulphur. Spanish pyrites 



