The Ocala banner. (Ocala, Marion County, Fla.) 1883-194?, 1911-10-13
VAST WORK IN soururen -
VEloPmENT STILL TO BE
DONE !

or4 "nen one of the for
most business men of New or,oana
VINO mad for some years taken 1aas
lug part In the effort the neonlo -
tne city were making to dave,on -.
only New Orleans. but the who'll
S'a'e' wrote the Manufacturers Roo
ora that AS Louisiana has M ro;noS
al resources whatever, its mator;o,
ueVelopment will have to be based
on other things" He had ent;ro,,.
overlooked the vast salt beds noss;.
Oily the greatest in the world. tho on,
phur deposits, which since then houo
made Louisiana sulphur dominate Tho
WORLDS trade; while at that time
nothing had been published about
tue almost unlimited possibilities CO..
cnelnlcai industry based on the salt
ana sulphur and other mineral no
sources OF the state. The great gas
ana oil fields of Louisiana had not
then been discovered. Now Il io roo
ognlzed by experts that Louisiana
presents today the most inviting fold
IN the world for the DEVELOPMENT of
vast chemical industries and that ;+S
great stores of oil and natural gas
make possible other lines of mann.
1acturlng on very large scale.
Inc business man to whose letter
we have referred was nrohablv &c
We'll posted about Louisiana as anv
man IN the state, and yet so little
was generally known about its min.
eral resources that he broadly said
that Louisiana had no mineral re-
sources and, therefore other lines of
industrial development must be con-
sidered. -
What has been ACCOMPLISHED in
Louisiane since that letter was writ
ten is typical of what may be accom-
A>pllshed in many parts of the south.
Tor there are still great resources un-
known to the people of this section
as well as to those of other sections.
Florida, for instance, is looked upon
by 999 people out of a thousand as a
land of oranges and grapefruit and
kindred interests, land whose win
ter climate annually makes it a haven
or rest and recreation for thousands
OF visitors, and not a state of
great industrial possibilities. But
Florida has far more than oranges
and grapefruit and trucking and
climate, great as they are. In fact,
Florida has very great mineral re-
sources for the development of man.
ufacturining as yet scarcely known.
sThe time may come when the manu-
featuring interests of that state will
rival in Importance the tourist bust
mess.
. 1t was about twenty-three years
ago when the discovery of phosphate
rock there turned the attention of in
vestors in the fertilizer industry of
the world to that state as a source
of supply of rock upon which the
worlds fertilizer industry rests. So
rapid has been the development of
phosphate mineral that that state
now has an annual output of over
100000 tons of rock, much of which
is shipped to Europe. The fertilizer
industry of Europe as we'll as of this
country is to a large extent depend
ent upon Florida as the source of it's
raw material One may regret, in
view of the exceptionally high grade
of Florida rock and it's dominating
position in the worlds fertilizer in
dustry that it does not command
very much higher price and yield to
the state a very much larger profit
through the development of the ferti-
lizer industry in Florida, rather than
the shipment of the raw material.
However, the industry is one of the
most important in the state. 1t is
quite probable that other discover
les of equal Importance to phosphate
rock are yet to be made in Florida.
1t is a state in which vast quantities
of fuller's earth are to be found,
where cement material is yet to be
utilized Wnere great DeuS VI po@1
may be made to supply cheap fuel.
and with the development of the
Everglades, now under way, Will
come the possibility of creating one
of the greatest sugar-producing re-
gions of the world. In 1887 Hon. VIM.
D. Kelley of Pennsylvania then
known as "The Father of the House
of Representatives" made a trip TO
the Everglades region of Florida and
wrote for the Manufacturers Record
an exceedingly interesting four-page
article on the possibilities OF sugar
growing in that state when the re-
c1amation of that vast region should
come about. Hamilton Diston the