THE CUBA REVIEW 23 
qualities of the tobacco fertilized with it. This caused, of course, the demand to drop 
off, this continuing until the business was destroyed and importation ceased. The 
prejudice against it had become so great that some of the cigar manufacturers in Havana 
placed a label on top of each box of cigars, stating that the tobacco used in making the 
cigars had not been grown with the use of Peruvian Guano as fertilizer. 
The period of the importation and use of Peruvian Guano and that of the intro- 
duction and extension of the use of modern commercial fertilizers prepared abroad and 
imported into Cuba overlapped by about three or four years. We have seen that the 
last cargo load of Peruvian Guano was received in 1904; about four years previously, 
however, Messrs. Fred & Henry Piel, operating from ‘Havana, introduced genuine 
chemical fertilizers under the trade name ‘‘Estrella.”” We understand that these goods 
were obtained from the American Agricultural Chemical Co. in the United States, and 
thus represented the first entry of this firm in the fertilizer business of Cuba. The 
Piel Brothers sold a first class fertilizer coming up to its analysis and giving satisfactory 
results on the tobacco crops to which it was applied, and began the demand for a white 
fertilizer for tobacco, which has ever since prevailed. About this time also the American 
Agricultural Chemical Co. through other agents-in. Cuba sold a considerable quantity 
of their goods, and thus paved the way for a more intimate connection with our fertilizer 
industry in later years. Slghtly later also the firm of Frank Robins & Co. introduced 
the goods of the Virginia-Carolina Chemical Co. to the tobacco growers of Pinar del 
Rio Province, and Swift. & Co. also began to place their products among these people. 
Other firms, for instance, Zabala & Co., as representatives of Baker Bros., of New York, 
also were influential in increasing the demand for fertilizers. As early as 1901, Zabala 
& Co. had issued pamphlets giving instructions to our planters regarding fertilizers 
and their use, and we believe that it was through them that the first sound experiments 
were made on the use of fertilizers on sugar cane in Cuba, and as early as 1904 the fer- 
tilizer imported by this firm amounted to nearly 4,000 0s during the 1904 calendar 
year. ~ 
The first indication of the establishment of fertilizer factories in Cuba, in which the 
goods to supply the ever growing demand for fertilizers might be prepared, was the in- 
stallation in the city of Pinar del Rfo, in 1907, of a fertilizer factory in which the holders 
of the majority stock were W. R. Grace & Co., of New York, other stockholders being 
Berndes & Co., and other private individuals in Cuba. At the time that this factory 
was established, the use of fertilizer on sugar cane was in reality just beginning, and 
doubtless wisdom seemed to point to Pinar del Rio as the best place in which the factory 
could be built, inasmuch as nearly all the fertilizer then being employed in the Island 
was being used to fertilize tobacco in the Province of Pinar del Rio. This factory 
continued operations until 1909, meeting with indifferent success, but in the latter year 
one of Cuba’s severe cyclones destroyed the factory building, leaving the company 
with a large stock of raw fertilizer materials on hand. The indifferent results secured 
from the previous operation of the business caused the company to decide to liquidate, 
thus leaving the stock of raw materials on the hands of W. R. Grace & Co., who had 
apparently no way in which to utilize it. This difficulty, however, was solved by the 
establishment in Havana of a branch of the Nitrate Agencies Co., one of the many 
units of this organization, a subsidiary of W. R. Grace & Co., whose object is the sale 
direct to the consumer of raw fertilizer ingredients of all kinds. Further mention will 
be made of this agency a little later. 
About the time that this factory was being destroyed, the American Agricultural 
Chemical Co. established a mixing plant in the warehouses of the United Railways Co. 
on the shores of Havana Harbor in Regla. This we believe to have taken place in 1909, 
since which date the increase in demand for the company’s products has compelled the 
gradual extension in area occupied by the plant, until at this writing eight sections of 
the warehouses of the United Railways are devoted to the work of the company. The 
plant is so situated as to have deep water connection and railroad connection with all 
the principal lines operating throughout Cuba, thus facilitating the reception of the 
