Newark evening star and Newark advertiser. [volume] (Newark, N.J.) 1909-1916, 1913-01-21


! then the Good Ship Earth will sail the
! illimitable fields of space without as
sengers. Is that what the Fates have
in store for us?
A fair crop of wheat takes from
each acre of the deckroom devoted
to its culture 1875 pounds OF phos-
phoric oxide; barley, is pounds; oats,
| ~; corns Is. and other crops accord
ingly. So even our rich lands possess
only enough in the upper eight inches
to mature from $50 to $50 crops. There
is phosphorus deeper than that, and
there are richer soils. But where
fields like those of Japan, Chine,
Korea and Manchuria have been
farmed for forty centuries, we find
the farmers are now obliged to put
back every year as much of this
element as they have taken away, or
more. A single years failure to do
this on their part and these nations
would begin to starve.
Yet we, The civilized the PRO
gressive' nation, waste our precious
store like drunken sailors. The linz
iting element in even our rich Mis-
sissippi valley soils is already phos-
phorus. Fifty years of our awful
robbery. of the storerooms of the
race takes out third of the phos-
phorus-a short fifty years. After
crediting the farms of Wisconsin
with the return of everything the
farmers put back, the net loss per
year in phosphorus to that State is
Is. 900, 900 pounds, worth at cents a
pound $750,O00. Our great balance
of trade" of which we SO much
boast, and with so little reason,
would look much smaller if we de-
Quoted from it the phosphorus sent
away-the actual land, in the grains
and meats and fruits.
Phosphorus does not exist in the
air, and being an element it cannot
be artiflcially produced. We must
find it if we get it. We find it in
fossil guano and in the phosphate
rocks. There are in South Carolina
g. 600, 900 tons of good phosphate rock,
which will pay to grind; In Florida
10, 100000 tons, in Tennessee 4oVoO'ooo
tons. We are mining this and eX-
porting it to restore the depleted
soils of Europe--for profit. 1t has
been estimated that all this store
will be gone by 1932-probably 1t VIII
vanish before. We can grind poorer
rock, but there is limit to the low
ness of the grade which will return
as much food as we shall expend in
grinding 1t.
Perhaps there is a region where God
has placed his store of phosphorus, as
He did in Chile in the case OF nitro
gen, and in Germany for potash!
There are many rocks still unex-
plored, and there may be much more
phosphate than we know of; but,
aside from 60,OOO,00O tons of high
grade in three South Sea islands, we
know of no great deposits save what
Uncle Sam possesses in Idaho, Wyom-
ing and Utah-the deposits the con-
servationists fought for to keep them
out of private hands.
Uncle Sam is the Colonel North and
the Kaiser Wilhelm of phosphorus
with 100000 tons of good rock in
his bunkers.
But, no matter how rich the rocks
may be, within any reasonable proba-
it is rigidly conserved-and the race
will die Once there were millions OF
tons of nitrogen fertilizer mixed with
phosphorus-called guano-in the
droppings of sea birds on Pacific
islands. The sea birds catch fish
which have much nitrogen and phos-
phorus in their bodies. These fish
pass through the digestive organs of
the birds, the undigested parts being
dropped on the islands where the
nests are made. The old Peruvians
protected the sea birds from destruc-
ton; for they knew that these winged
benefactors were retrieving from the
ocean the lost fertility of the globe.
But we are civilized and kill the
birds! The last men on earth may
be grouped about the spots whose
phosphorus has not been lost from
the soil-spots like the phosphate
soils of the Bluegrass region of Ken
lucky, and portions of France, and
some other countries, and in regions
kept populated by the fertility re-
trieved from the sea by billions of
sea- birds bred for that purpose.
But before that time comes, as I'M
less we change our ways it will, the
world will tremble with the tread of
armed hosts leaving lands depleted
of their phosphorus, and hunting new
lands.
See tomorrow.s Evening Star for
this great series.