12 Maine Agricultural Experiment Station. 1920. 



improved that American made potash salts of reasonable purity 

 are now available in quantity and quality for the manufacture 

 of fertilizers. 



How Can the User of Fertilizers be Protected by the 



Law? 



During the past 20 years there has been such a decided 

 economic change that fertilizer manufacturing has been prac- 

 tically revolutionized. Less than a generation ago fertilizers 

 were practically all made by the use of a few standard materi- 

 als such as nitrate of soda, sulphate of ammonia, dried blood, 

 dissolved bone black, and muriate or sulphate of potash. When 

 a manufacturer put out a definite formula it practically always, 

 year after year, carried the same constituents in practically the 

 same proportions. Furthermore these goods were shipped into 

 large storehouses in Maine and it was possible for the inspector 

 to go to these storehouses and draw a sample from packages 

 out of a lot of a 100 to 500 tons of each brand. Because of the 

 rather comparatively uniformity of mauufacture and the sam- 

 ples taken from such large shipments the occasional random 

 sample fairly represented the goods which were given to the 

 consumer. 



The shortage and scarcity and variety of material entering 

 into mixed goods have brought it about that even the most reli- 

 able standard brands are liable to be made up in a single season 

 on quite different formulas although they would give the same 

 ultimate analyses. Furthermore these goods instead of being 

 shipped in large quantities into warehouses are for the most part 

 sent directly to the user, and hence the samples collected by the 

 inspectors are rarely representative of more than a few tons. 

 This diversity of manufacturing formulas for making up the 

 goods of the same brand and analyses was clearly brought out 

 in cooperation with the companies in looking up the borax sit- 

 uation in 1919/ It has also been very evident in the different 

 analyses showing the different sources of nitrogen in the dif- 

 ferent samples of the same brands as they have been examined 

 in recent years. 



This economic situation is a fact, and the consumer must 

 adjust himself to these new conditions in order to have a some- 



