South Bend news-times. (South Bend, Ind.) 1913-1938, 1919-02-05
MONOPOLY
LOST TO GERMANY
Great Britain 0verComeS Ad-
vantage Long Held by
World War Enemy.

Until quite recently one of Ger
many's trump cards. which she re-
lied upon playing II ever a peace
conference should come. was
potash!
This substance. though never oc-
curing free in nature, is present
in any fertile soil. from which it is
extracted by plants Wien It has
all been extracted it must be re-
placed, otherwise the plants wither
and die.
Now, before the war, practically
the entire worlds supply of this es-
sential plant food, came from the
mines OF Stassfurt. in Prussian Sax
ony, where it had been deposited
by the evaporation Of a vast inland
salt water lake in prehistoric times.
Without this potash OF hers. Ger
many argued. British harvests would
fail, so that sheer need OF food
would sooner or later compel the
English TO accept her terms. But
early In the war British chemists
and agriculturists, realizing the peril
Of a potash famine, went energet-
ically to work.
First OF all the potash-seekers
turned their attention 10 the waste
products Of the blast furnaces used
/ in the manufacture of pig iron. 1t
1 had long been known that potash
! existed in the dust drawn from the
stoves and boilers OF blast furnace
works. The great drawback was
/ that there was not enough OF IL.
\ Potash is volatile stuff, and in the
terrific heat Of the blast furnaces
most of it was driven off IN the
form of gas and lost.
The first problem obviously was
/ to recover the potash from the gas.
\ This eventually was accomplished
\ by a system Of first cooling, and
then washing" the gas, so that all
\ foreign elements i n 1t were pre-
cipitated, including. Of course. the
/ potash.
BY these means the quantity of
potash obtained from the dust was.
in many instances, quadrupled, but
even with this result the expert
mentors were not satisfied, and cast
about for further methods OF in
creasing the amount.
After elaborate and exhaustive ex-
periments, continued from the
autumn Of 1914 down to the spring
Of 1916, il was found that by adding
common salt 10 the furnaces the
potash output could be enormously
increased. but the fact remained
that the supply was still too limited.
depending, as it necessarily did, upon
the quantities of pig iron made.
experimentation with the by
products of other than the iron in
dustrv. were then undertaken, and
/ success was met with in some un-
expected quarters: for example by
the recovery Of large quantities of
/ by-product potash in connection with
one Of the processes of the wool
combing industry. which is conferred
in Bradford, England.
Until recently the method used
there for washing the raw wool was
10 scour it in hot water with alkali
and soap in three or four different
vessels. The investigators discov-
subiecting the wool TO a prelimi-
nary wash in cold water considerable
amounts OF nearly pure potash were
recoverable. and many hundreds OF
tons weekly are now being produced
from this source alone.
The salt process, too, has been APP
piled TO other than blast furnace
works. notably 10 those connected
with the manufacture OF cement.
Waste gases from the cement kilns
have been found 10 contain large
quantities of potash. and this sup
| ply has been amazingly increased,
as i'm the case of the blast furnaces,
by the addition OF salt.
The net result OF il all is that
Great Britain is in a fair way 10 be-
come entirely independent of Ger
many for her after-the-war supply
/ Of DOtaSh