FERTILIZERS. 75 



of his business, having used fertilizers in former years, 

 believing that the more of a good thing the better, in 

 planting his drill-crops, cut a hole in each bag of fertilizing 

 material, when two men would walk along the rows, carry- 

 ing the bag between them until it was empty. A gentle 

 man told me, who saw his potatoes dug, that at that time 

 the fertilizer would turn up two or three inches deep under 

 them. This gardener used sixty or more tons in this way ; 

 and more or less of his crops, as might have been antici- 

 pated, were any thing but a success. 



The words " cheap " and " cheat " are almost synony- 

 mous when applied to fertilizers offered for sale. Consider 

 the matter a moment. Potash, nitrogen, and phosphoric 

 acid, the three ingredients which give to them about all 

 their value, have become regular market articles in every 

 form in which they are found, whether in bones, fish-waste, 

 phosphate rock, German potash salts, slaughter-house waste, 

 cotton-seed, tankage, or in any other combination in which 

 they come into the market. When a dealer has any of these 

 for sale, and offers them to manufacturers of fertilizers, he 

 (the manufacturer) takes an average sample of the lot, 

 puts it into the hands of his chemist, who at once analyzes 

 it, and reports what per cent of nitrogen, phosphoric acid, 

 or potash, as may be, the article contains. The manufactur- 

 ers purchase it on that basis ; viz., so much per pound for 

 either ingredient : in valuing it, reference being had to the 

 degree of availability in which they exist in the articles 

 offered. Potash, nitrogen, and phosphoric acid being, 

 therefore, regular market articles, how can any manu- 

 facturer undersell his fellow-dealers with a fertilizer of 

 equal value ? The whole thing is governed by the common 

 rules of business. It can only be by using more capital, 

 and so buying his raw materials on a larger scale, and thus 

 getting the reduction that any man in any business gets; 



