The progressive farmer. [volume] (Winston, N.C.) 1886-1904, 1889-03-12
LETTER FROM MICHIGAN.
A Western Hoosier Solves the South
ern Fertilizer Question.
DAWSON Mich Fab 10 1000


DAWSON, Mich, Feb. l9, 1889.
EDITOR PROGRESSIVE FARMER Dear
SIR II am in receipt of a sample
copy of your paper for which accept
thanks, 1t is quite acceptable, giving,
as it does, an insight into the affairs
of region of country of which we,
in this section, know about as little as
we do of the Transval. The article
on alliance Factories, that by Gen.
Lee, of Mississippi, the work and
aims Of your farmer societies are very
able and interesting. The Alliance is
something know nothing about. &
am a farmer and despise our climate.
A blizzard prevails today, with snow
flying at the rate of forty miles an
hour. | am surprised at the small
amount of land advertised for sale.
How are lands down there for price 2 :
In looking over your columns, one of
the most noticeable features is the fire.
quent mention of fertilizers, chiefly
commercial. 1t strikes me the South,
has an inexhaustible mine of fertil-
izers lying unworked at her doors.
With us all the refuse of the great
slaughter houses is compounded with
some heavy and cheap substance as
sand, &C., and sold to the farmers.
Leached ashes are shipped from here
by carloads, to be mixed with some
thing else and retailed at $40 ton.
Farmers sell the ashes to buyers at a.
bushel for bar of soap. State farm
analysis places the value of hard wood
ashes at ST. barrel. Quotations put
the soap at two to five cents bar. /
do not doubt that this kind of fer
tilizer is shipped even to Florida at as
high as $40 ton.
We are foolish for selling the un-
leached ashes are as simple for
buying the leached-for on your boT-
der lies the great gulf, full of animal
life. IF dried blood, a little bone and
acid, with whole heaps of sand and
leached ashes are good, fish composted,
must be worth something.
There are enough sharks off your
coast to keep you in fertilizers, and
more are Matching. It wouldn't re-
quire an immense capital to put a.
schooner in the business of catching
them off the Indies for fertilizer man
ufactories
1t would not require very costly
dynamo to kill them, with an electric
current, when they have taken the
bait; still less to kill them with q
dynamite cartridge and electric spark,
when the bait is swallowed.
Couldn't this fishery, just for fer
tilizers, be made as profitable as whale
fisheries
The PROGRESSIVE FARMER speaks of
Alliance factories Can't your ALI
ance start cooperative fertilizer fac
tory and draw the flesh material from
the gulf?
Get to the front of the procession;
"there's millions in it,
Sell me a piece of land, some of
you, wfniie,I come down and truck
farm and heff you boom truck, can.
neries and shark fishing for manure
ERNEST H0LLENBECK,
Dawson, Mich.
N. B.-Have you any Agricultural
Colleges down South Get the Pro-
fessor of Chemistry to make an analy-
sis of shark meat and see what its
value is. From my reading | judge
it is not very oily, is never fshed for
it's oil product-not bony. 1t must
be muscle, and, therefore, nitrogen
ous-just what your soil needs. It is
worth investigation l believe it can
be made vast industry and the goods
sold North, too.