MINERAL PRODUCTION IN FLORIDA DURING 1919 
Co-operation in the collection of mineral statistics for 1919 was con¬ 
tinued with the United States Geological Survey. This being the year 
for the collection of statistics by the Bureau of Census, co-operative ar¬ 
rangements were entered into with that Bureau by the United States 
Geological Survey. This delayed somewhat the publication of the re¬ 
turns, but avoided much duplication of work and expense, assuring also 
more detailed statistics and unified results. The returns as published 
in a recent bulletin of the Fourteenth Census are here abstracted. 
The census does not cover enterprises which were idle, that is, in 
which neither productive work nor development work was done during 
the entire year, nor the products of any enterprise valued at less than 
$500. This partially accounts for the discrepancies between the totals 
of the Bureau of Census and those of the United States Geological Sur¬ 
vey. 
“Florida, which ranks twenty-first among the states in size (land area 
54,861 square miles) and thirty-second in population (968,470 in 1920), 
ranked thirty-second in value of mineral products.for 1919. The state 
also ranked thirty-second in the total number of persons engaged in the 
mining industries and in the average number of wage earners employed. 
“The industries reported for 1919, ranked according to the value of 
products, were the mining or quarrying of phosphate rock, fuller’s 
earth, clay, limestone, and rare metals (titanium and zirconium). The 
mining industries which can be shown without disclosure of individual 
operations are ranked by value of products in Table 2. 
“Phosphate rock mining which is localized in nine central Gulf Coast 
and adjoining counties is the leading mineral industry in Florida. In 
this industry Florida outranks all other states. The value of products 
reported for the phosphate-rock industry in Florida in 1919 was $6,678,- 
888,* which was 74.4 per cent of the value of all mineral products of 
the state and 64.8 per cent of the value of products of the phosphate-rock 
industry in the United States in 1919 ($10,300,198). 
“The mining industry second in importance was fuller’s earth, pro¬ 
duced in Gadsden and Manatee Counties. In this industry also Florida 
*Total value of phosphate production during 1919, as shown by returns from pro¬ 
ducers collected by the U. S. Geological Survey in co-operation with the Florida 
Geological Survey, was $7,797,929. 
