6 



to see the day in which every pound of cotton he produces will 

 be spun into yarn or woven into cloth by machinery driven 

 by the neighboring streams. He tells the capitalist that these 

 factories pay twenty to thirty per cent, net profit. The Charles- 

 ton manipulators of fertilizers have not pocketed the one-half 

 of that net profit from the commencement of the work until to- 

 day. Yet the farmers, who have money, would never dream of 

 exacting less than eighteen per cent, from one another for its 

 use, and it is the experience of the writer, himself a farmer, 

 that cotton lands pay better dividends either directly or in en- 

 hanced value, than phosphate stocks, and these stocks are ever 

 on the market, and heretofore generally under par ; and why 

 have not the farmers, who are capitalists, bought them up? 

 The truth is the men who invested money in these manufacto- 

 ries were men who have other interests in and around the City 

 of Charleston, and it was more with the hope of improving and 

 enhancing the values of such other properties that these invest- 

 ments were made, than with a view of making extraordinary 

 profits on the investments made. 



The facilities for manufacturing superphosphates are as good 

 or better in this city than they are at any other point on this 

 continent. 



The immense supply of bone, the character and area of which 

 beds are hereafter described, afford an inexhaustible supply of 

 bone -phosphate of lime. The superphosphate made from it 

 is the principal base of all complete fertilizers, and, used alone, or 

 in combination with domestic supplies of ammonia and potash, 

 will supply all the wants of the farmer, so far as a commercial 

 fertilizer is needed. The Etiwan Company has for several 

 years shipped to the consumers, at $35 per ton on board the 

 cars, a twenty-four per cent, soluble bone phosphate of lime, 

 which would yield eleven per cent, soluble phosphoric acid, and 

 about forty-five per cent, sulphate of lime, or land plaster. If 

 we reckon the value of this compound as based solely on the 

 amount of soluble phosphoric acid, it would cost sixteen cents 

 per pound. But if the farmer will agree that sulphate of lime, 

 or land plaster, is worth $10 per ton, or one-half cent per pound, 

 it would give as the value of the land plaster in a ton of twen- 

 ty-four per cent, dissolved bone, $4.50, which would reduce the 

 price of phosphoric acid to fourteen cents per pound; and if 

 you reckon the value of the small amount of insoluble bone 

 phosphate of lime contained in it as of any value, even to less 

 than that amount. The same company has also shipped a 

 twenty-nine per cent, soluble bone phosphate at $38, which, 

 basing its value solely on phosphoric acid, would give it at 

 fourteen cents per pound, or, taking off one-half cent per pound 

 for the sulphate lime contained, would reduce the value of 

 phosphoric acid to twelve and one-third cents per pound, or, 

 giving any value to the insoluble bone phosphate of lime, to even 

 less than that price. 



