130 
FLORIDA STATE HORTICULTURAL SOCIETY. 
bill of fertilizer and depends on the suc¬ 
cess of his crop for his pay, does this not 
establish just as true a co-partnership re¬ 
lation between the farmer and the manu¬ 
facturer as exists between Smith and 
Brown who sell dry goods in co-partner¬ 
ship? The manufacturer who sells goods 
on time is interested in the success of the 
farmer because he has money invested 
there. If the farmer fails, then there is 
hardship on him to pay his fertilizer bill, 
and hence the pocket of the manufactur¬ 
er is touched. Mr. F. B. Dancey, in a 
paper delivered in Atlanta, a few months 
ago, said that as a farmer followed his 
wandering boy because his heart was 
touched, so the manufacturer of fertil¬ 
izer follows his wandering dollar because 
his pocket is touched. 
If the average farmer could once un¬ 
derstand that it is not profitable for the 
manufacturer to practice fraud there 
would be a better understanding of the 
manufacture, control and demand of this 
indispensable commodity—fertilizer. No 
man can judge accurately as to the qual¬ 
ity of a fertilizer by the senses of ap¬ 
pearance, smell and touch. There is one 
and only one way to test fertilizer and 
this is the chemical laboratory. For this 
reason, not many years ago, there was 
perhaps more sophistry practiced in com¬ 
mercial fertilizer than any other manu¬ 
factured product. The average farmer 
bought Brown’s fertilizer because he 
heard some one say Brown’s was good. 
Gradually conditions have changed. More 
farmers are buying fertilizer on a guar¬ 
antee basis, the same as the manufactur¬ 
er does. What manufacturer would 
purchase a cargo of Brown’s potash, 
without knowing how much potash was 
in it? There is more competition in the 
manufacturing industry and our manu¬ 
facturers are nearer home where we can 
get at them should they attempt decep¬ 
tion. And again, as stated above, the 
saying that honesty is the best policy 
was never truer relative to any business 
than when applied to the fertilizer indus¬ 
try. 
It is not my intention to discredit our 
state control department in the least, nor 
to minimize the importance of this 
branch of government. Were it not for 
the state laboratory the consumer and 
the honest manufacturer would suffer at 
the hands of the dishonest manufacturer. 
It seems to be an universally recognized 
fact that the farmer does not get his 
share of this world’s goods. So if it 
were not for the control afforded by the 
state laboratory the honestly inclined 
manufacturer would be compelled to 
seek dishonest methods in order to suc¬ 
ceed in business, and hence the farmer 
would be the ultimate loser. The com¬ 
missioner of agriculture in his report for 
the years 1907 and 1908 says: “The 
people as a whole reap more direct bene¬ 
fit from the proper application of the 
stock feed and fertilizer laws than from 
any other statutes that mark the pages of 
our law books.” 
The fertilizer law is enforced by the 
taking of what we designate as official 
samples, and analyzing the samples so 
taken, and publishing the results in the 
Florida Quarterly Bulletin. These sam¬ 
ples referred to are taken by the state 
chemist himself, or by other sworn in¬ 
spectors of the department. There has 
never been a complaint, so far as I know, 
of a manufacturer or consumer, that we 
