HIGH GRADE FERTILIZERS. 85 



farmer who desires it, there is no need of this 

 'Agoing it blind." 



In compounding the various concentrated fertili- 

 zers, all sorts of materials are made use of— fish, 

 bone, blood, slaughter-house refuse, phosphate rock, 

 guano, potash salts, nitrates, sulphate of ammonia, 

 and many other things — and manu- 

 High Grade facturers are always on the lookout 



VB. Low Grade „ ^ , . .,,-,« 



Fertilizers. lor everything available for this pur- 

 pose, and purchasable at a reasonable 

 price. As a result of all this, and of different ways 

 of preparation, and different proportions in mixing, 

 etc., we have the thousand and one different brands, 

 in different degrees of strength and composition, 

 for general and special purposes, and of different 

 prices, from twenty, or less, to forty -five dollars and 

 upwards per ton. 



These fertilizer men have superior facilities for 

 purchasing, preparing and mixing the ingredients, 

 and their professional skill enables them to make 

 these materials most readily available and effective. 

 At the same time there is competition enough that 

 we might think it would keep the selling price of 

 honest fertilizers down to within just a little above 

 the line where the business barely pays its own ex- 

 penses. One of the prominent eastern fertilizer 

 manufacturers recently, in public, declared his 

 willingness to give to anybody who would guarantee 

 him a clear profit of two dollars per ton on his goods ^ 

 all the income above that limit. This profit, even 

 though it secures the company a fine income, is, 

 however, not larger than the farmer can well afford 

 to pay to the manufacturer for a high-grade article. 



But I cannot warn too strongly against the low- 

 grade, so-called * 'cheap" fertilizers. They are not 



