Ladysmith news-budget. [volume] (Ladysmith, Rusk County, Wis.) 1907-1927, 1916-07-14
ONE BENEFIT FROM WORLD WAR
America Now Independent of the
World in Fertilizers.

United States, even surprising in
importance the stimulation to our
foreign trade, has been to force our
scientists to develop home resour
ces for the renewal of American
soil fertility.
Until the war broke out, the
United States supposed itself to be
at the mercy Of two great foreign
monopolies in two of the essential
elements of fertilizer, nitrates and
potash. The only natural supply
Of nitrate salts on earth is in Chile.
Germany, at Stassfurt, possesses
the only potash mines on earth. Nj
trates and potash are two of the
three indispensable elements of
plant food, the other being phos-.
plate.
To keep fertilizer away from a
country means starvation. Al
ready the effects of the fertilizer
famine can be observed in the
European war. Germany has all
the potash and nitrates she needs,
but she has no native supply of
phosphate, except the casual sup
ply that comes from stable refuse,
nor have her scientists been able
to produce phosphate artificially.
She has been largely dependent for
her phosphate supply upon the de-
posts of phosphate rock in Flori-
da and other southern states. For
two years she has been shut off
from this supply, and recently the
German food dictator announced
that last years German farm crop
was short. Scientists in Washing
ton are inclined to connect this
shortage with the inability of Ger
many to get phOsphates.
Without scientific resourceful-
ness, the United States might have
found herself in Germany's predi-
ment. But, with scientific re-
sourcefullness, we have now
abundant home supplies of both
elements, not in mines and other
natural deposits, but in new chem
ical processes perfected by our
own American. scientists.
The government has taken the
lead in this movement. What has
been done toward giving us a nj
trate supply by fixing" the nitro
gen of the air in such forms that
plants can feed upon it, is we'll
known. The government has ap-
propriated s15,OOO,O0O for a nitrate
plant, and the supply of nitrogen
in the air is inexhaustible; it will
last forever.
The greater miracle is the story
of how we have found potash, and
found it in abundance. The &C.
illogical Survey has been boring
and prospecting for potash for
more than ten years, but never has
commercially workable potash
supply been discovered, although it
is supposed that the salts exist in
our country.
But now, since the war started,
we have found our potash supply,
and it is not in mine or in the
brine wells of the salt works. Our
scientists have discovered more
potash than we can use in the arts
and on the soil, exhausting and
wasting as gas from the chimneys
and stacks of our iron furnaces
and lime kilns.
The process by which this potash
may be economically recovered
was discovered by Prof. Cottrell, a
scientist of the government Bureau
of Mines. The Cotrell process was
originally intended and used not to
recover by-products but to prevent
gases destructive to vegetation
from issuing from factory stacks.
After the war broke out and the
price of potash leaped skyward, a
cement company in California,
which had employed the process
to prevent the destruction of yege-
tation by fumes from its stacks.
found this flue dust rich in potash.
Since then, scientists have made
the startling estimate that the re-
covery Of the potash from all the
limestone burned for cement will
supply 40 per cent of all the pot
ash needed in this country.
The same process can be used to
recover the potash and other val
liable minerals in the gas which
comes from the iron smelter. Some
striking facts in the iron industry
have been discovered in the past
few months. With potash at pres
ent prices, it is now known that for
every ST. worth of fluid iron smelt--
ed from the ore, potash worth $500
passes away in gas and is wasted.
Since the recovery process is op-
Grated cheaply, it is expected that