MIXING FERTILIZERS ON THE FARM 89 



prehension, co-operation and cash that effects these reductions in the cost of 

 fertilizer supplies." This is the secret of the whole matter. The prices of 

 ready mixed fertilizers have to be kept high because of the long credits and 

 bad debts, and the men who buy them have to pay these bad debts of others 

 in advanced prices. Buying the materials for cash in wholesale lots through 

 a combination of neighbors will always result in a great saving. It is far 

 better to borrow the money to pay cash for fertilizers than to pay the credit 

 price. 



Bulletin No. 65 of the Vermont Agricultural Experiment Station, says : 

 "Home mixtures made in this State furnished from 30 to 50 per cent, more 

 plant-food at the same cost than did average manufacturers' mixtures." 



Dr. C. W. Dabney, Director of the Tennessee Experiment Station, 

 writes: "Farmers who take their life work seriously and study earnestly the 

 experimental work of the State Stations, for the purpose of informing them- 

 selves with regard to the useful ingredients of fertilizers, the proper mode 

 of applying them and such matters, are getting more and more into the 

 habit of buying the raw materials for fertilizers and mixing them themselves, 

 or else they have a compound mixed at a factory according to their own 

 formula and from materials of their own selection." 



Farmers' Bulletin No. 84, II. S. Department of Agriculture, treats of 

 the various objections raised to the practice of home mixing. "Farmers are 

 persuaded that the compounding of fertilizers is an intricate and difficult 

 matter, requiring extensive acquaintance with chemistry, costly machinery 

 and great technical skill. The case well illustrates the old adage, that a 

 half truth is a whole falsehood. The production and manufacture of fer- 

 tilizing materials that is, the selection, quarrying, grinding and acidulation 

 of phosphatic rock; the drying and grinding of slaughter house refuse, the 

 production and refining of such materials as nitrate of soda, sulphate of 

 ammonia and muriate of potash all these are distinctly manufacturing 

 processes, which require chemical or technical knowledge, skill in manipula- 

 tion, and expensive machinery. But these operations are entirely separate 

 and distinct from the compounding of mixed fertilizers. Each of the 

 materials named comes from the manufacturer in condition to be used by 

 itself as a fertilizer, and each one is so used for special purposes. The com- 

 pounding of these materials under a proprietary brand into a mixed fertilizer, 

 is no more a manufacture than is the mixing of a ration of corn meal and 

 bran to be fed to a cow. The only difference is that the ration which is 

 designed to be distributed uniformly to thousands or millions of plants 

 requires to be more carefully mixed than that fed to a single cow. If we 

 were feeding each plant by itself no mixing would be necessary, or if we 



