MINERAL INDUSTRIES OF THE UNITED STATES FERTILIZERS. 11 
lies more or less continuously a strip of country inclosed between 
the Coast Range and the Andes, and extending for several hundred 
miles southward from the confines of Peru. This occurrence was 
discovered in 1821, and its exploitation led directly to the Peruvian- 
Chilean war of 1879-1882, which resulted in the acquisition by the 
latter country of the coastal portion of Bolivia and the Peruvian 
province of Tarapaca. Its continued development has made Chile 
a stable and prosperous nation, as a result of the governmental 
income from the royalty imposed on exports; and for the past half 
century the whole world has looked to this locality for its nitrogen 
supply. Such has been the case because nowhere else on the globe 
have geological conditions conspired to produce a vast accumidation 
of nitrogen fixed in usable form. Even here these valuable deposits 
owe their existence to the total absence of rain. 
Chilean nitrate has become of greater importance to the explosive 
industry than to the manufacture of fertilizer, owing to the fact that 
it is the chief source of nitric acid used in making practically all 
explosives. In this connection, however, it should be remembered 
that explosives are not solely employed in times of war, but their 
utilization is also widespread in peace time in the blasting operations 
upon which modern mining and railroad construction depend. 
Without the Chilean deposits, it would appear, the world would 
have been deterred for many decades, if not longer, in reaching the 
point of industrial development in which it is now involved, so far- 
reaching can be the effect of a single mineral deposit. 
The fertilizer industry, therefore, in order to obtain its share of 
Chilean nitrate, has been forced to meet a price raised by this counter 
industrial demand and the generous royalty imposed by the Chilean 
Government, and only mitigated by the provision of nature in ren- 
dering the deposits of such character as to be cheaply worked. And 
when we add to this the recent demands put upon this mineral de- 
posit by the unparalleled needs of the allied Governments in regard 
to war explosives and consider in addition the circumstance of a 
constantly decreasing ocean tonnage growing out of the submarine 
warfare we see that the problem of Chilean nitrate from a fertilizer 
standpoint is not easy of solution. We gain some idea at the same 
time why the “ nitrogen question,” which sprang into prominence 
over a year ago, still holds well to the forefront. 
The fertilizer industry, seeing its most convenient nitrogen source 
drawn upon by another large industry and then upon the coming of 
war largely appropriated 1 by that activity, has concerned itself 
1 Not so much in a numerical as in an economic sense. While such figures 
as may be obtained seem to indicate that as much Chilean nitrate is going into 
fertilizers in this country in 1917 as in 1913, the heavy war demands for this 
substance have worked against its effective (i. e., cheap) utilization in fertilizers.. 
