The Phosphates of TennesseeByH. D. RuhmMr. Ruhm is one of the pioneers in the phosphate field and his paper on this subject is the work of an expert.—Ed.
ByH. D. Ruhm
Mr. Ruhm is one of the pioneers in the phosphate field and his paper on this subject is the work of an expert.—Ed.
The phosphates of Tennessee occur chiefly, in fact, almost entirely, in the strata representing the Silurian and Devonian geological ages, or, more properly, in the former, and in a transition period between the two.
The Silurian age was essentially the age of shell fish, animals with their skeletons entirely on the outside of their bodies. The deposits of countless millions of these shell fish and their remains form the immense beds of limestone representing the Silurian age. The composition of these shell fish was carbonate of calcium, or “lime,” and hence our common limestones are calcium carbonate.
Fig. A. Fig. B.
The Devonian age was the age of fishes or vertebrates, and owing to the need of greater elasticity of their bones and smaller weight, they are composed of phosphate of calcium, or “lime.” Far back in the Silurian age the “Hand that fashioned all things well” began to change some of these shell fish to provide for the future order of things, so that their outside skeletons, or shells, were composed of phosphate of lime instead of carbonate. These two commingling, the resultant beds of rock became somewhat phosphatic and formed the “phosphatic limestones” of the Silurian age. In some places the phosphate shells were in considerable proportion, and subsequent erosion, proper underground drainage and leaching, dissolved out the carbonate of lime to greater or less extent and left the “brown phosphate” of the middle basin, varying in grade according to the preponderance of phosphate shells in the original deposit and the extent of the subsequent leaching. Meantime the transition stage between the two ages had been reached and the resulting deposit spread over the central basin and the highland rim in the form of a thin blanket of varying thickness and quality of the so-called blue rock, which is blue, brown, gray and black, according to the coloring matter present or absent, composed of a preponderance of microscopic shell fish with skeleton composed of phosphate of lime, but mixed with enough carbonate to make the resulting mass vary from sixty-five per cent to as high as eighty per cent calcium phosphate.
The subsequent depression and deposit of Devonian shales and subcarboniferous beds and subsequent great pressure hardened all these into rock, and about the middle of the subcarboniferous age all these were elevated above the surroundingcountry, and while the rest of the land was taking its turn in being formed under the seas, this old central basin was undergoing the wear and tear of erosion that finally produced the “Dimple of the Universe,” surrounded by its chain of hills and ridges and flatwoods of the highland rim.
In the central basin where conditions were favorable the intervening strata between the blue rock and the phosphatic limestones that were being converted into “brown rock” were sometimes partly and sometimes entirely washed away, and the blanket of the blue rock, cracked and broken into plates of the hardest and most durable parts, settled down on the brown rock, sometimes resting directly on it and sometimes with a clay seam left to represent the former intervening strata.
A glance at the illustrations will show the process. Let Figure A represent the deposit as it originally was before the erosion and leaching started in.
No. 1 represents the layer of blue rock in its original position; 2 the layers of limestone underneath; 3 the layers of highly phosphatic limestone in suitable condition for leaching; 4 the hard, insoluble portions of the limestone, and 5 the soluble portions of the limestone, nonphosphatic.
In Figure B, No. 5 has dissolved out and disappeared. In No. 3, the carbonate has leached out and it has separated into laminations and falling into the places left by No. 5, has assumed the jumbled condition found in the dips between lime boulders; No. 2 has dissolved down to the clay seam so generally found, varying in thickness from one or two inches to two or three feet, and No. 1 has settled down conforming to the general bottom of 3 or top of 4, forming the top rock generally prevalent in the brown rock field.
If the analysis of the original phosphatic limestone was, say, 50 per cent phosphate of lime, 38 per cent carbonate and 12 per cent insoluble, and other matters, and the leaching took out all the soluble carbonate, the resulting mass would be 80 per cent phosphate, which is generally the analysis of the bottom rock at Mt. Pleasant, or the “export,” as it is termed. The top rock varies in analysis from 65 to 80, just as the original blue rock did.
In the highland rim this process took place only on the slopes of the narrow creek valleys and occasionally in projecting points, instead of over large areas of country as in the central basin.
In the portion of the highland rim left intact the blue rock remains in place as a general thing with its varying quality and thickness, retaining its original compact form and density.
Occasionally, however, is found the layer of blue rock resting immediately on the layer of phosphatic limestone, and where this is the case numerous faults and dips occur, showing a similar structure to the Mt. Pleasant formation typified.
Again, in the central basin or brown rock region, the top erosion first disintegrated and then partially took off the upper layers of shale or flint, sometimes entirely, sometimes leaving it from one to forty feet thick, which accounts for the varying overburden.
In some places the limestone layers were entirely soluble or reduced to clay and some acid condition of soil water dissolved the upper layers of phosphate and redeposited it in the boulder and stalagmite forms of the “white rock” found in Perry and Decatur counties and near Godwin, in Maury County, and the “boulder rock” found everywhere to greater or less extent but in especially heavy deposits near Nashville on the McGavock Place. These latter redeposit varieties vary in analysis from 50 per cent to as high as 90 per cent phosphate, and are uncertain as far as the general variety goes, though individual deposits varying in extent from one to twenty or thirty acres, are found of very uniform quality.
The first phosphate rock discovered in Tennessee was the kidney formation that almost always attends the blue rock and black shale deposit. The eminent physician, naturalist, botanist and geologist, Dr. Gattinger, of Nashville, of revered and beloved memory, was first to recognize these as phosphate rock, but being much more interested in determining the family and pedigree of some newbeetle or plant than in the commercial aspect of any mineral proposition, he never gave his discovery to the world, and only by his casual mention of the fact one day to Will Shirley and Maj. W. J. Whitthorne, of Columbia, are we able to give him credit for the knowledge. Dr. Safford, in his “Geology of Tennessee,” describes in detail both the blue and brown rocks geologically, referring to the blue rock as a blue fossiliferous limestone nearly always occurring under the Devonian shale; but no chemical investigations being provided for, he did not find out that it was a phosphate rock. Major Whitthorne and Mr. Shirley kept up a systematic hunt for a deposit of commercial value and finally the former located one on upper Swan Creek simultaneously with the discovery made lower down the same creek by Messrs. Bates and Childs. These latter gentlemen were insistent that the black shale, commonly called slate rock, so abundant in the highland rim country, was a form of, or indicative of the proximity of, coal, and at regularly recurring intervals they would send in particularly promising looking samples to Professor Wharton, of Nashville, for analysis. One day they dropped into their bag of samples a piece of blue rock which they informed Professor Wharton was nearly always present under the “slate,” and seemed to be a “bloom.” What was their astonishment to receive from Professor Wharton the report that their coal was still worthless, but that their bloom was phosphate rock, analyzing over 70 per cent. This was in December, 1893, and like the news of William Tell in Switzerland, of old, “From hill to hill the summons flew,” and the whole country went phosphate and option mad.
Lack of transportation and timidity of capital, coupled with the large amount of territory occupied by the deposit and the numerous parties holding properties caused the development to be spasmodic and comparatively small and scattered, and in consequence the price soon fell from $4.25 per ton f. o. b. Aetna, which was the first sale, made by the old Southwestern Phosphate Co., to $2.25 per ton, which was the price at which blue rock guaranteed 65 per cent was sold in 1896, being just a small margin over the cost of production and hauling to the railroad.
In January, 1896, at a time when negotiations were on foot for the sale of a large tract of blue rock land on Swan Creek, Mr. S. Q. Weatherly, former county judge, and prior to that county surveyor of Lewis County, while on a trip to Mt. Pleasant, noticed the peculiar brown rock in the ditch at the roadside on the W. S. Jennings’ farm west of Mt. Pleasant, and being interested in minerals, picked up a piece of it. Noticing the analagous appearance to the weathered blue rock, which is generally brown on the surface, he dropped it in his buggy. On his return to Swan Creek, he showed it to Mr. Harry Arnold and Col. D. B. Cooper, who were interested in the negotiations above mentioned. These gentlemen had it analyzed and finding it to be 75 per cent phosphate rock, induced Mr. Weatherly to say nothing about it until after their deal was consummated. Associated with these gentlemen was also Mr. W. J. Webster, and during the time from January to July, 1896, when the negotiations for the sale of the blue rock properties were finally closed, they ascertained partially the extent of the Mt. Pleasant brown rock field.
When their “big trade” was made they formed the firm of H. I. Arnold & Co., bought two and one-half acres of land from Mr. Mumford Smith, ostensibly for a calf lot for Mt. Pleasant’s present genial mayor, Mr. W. D. Cooper, leased at a royalty of ten cents per ton a few acres from Mr. Cooper and a few from a darky named Tom Smith, got an option from Mrs. M. G. Frierson on the present Columbian & Blue Grass Hills, and commenced mining rock and putting it on the cars at a cost of about eighty-five cents per ton. This rock, without preparation, ran 75 per cent instead of 65 per cent, but whereas the blue rock had never run higher than 3 per cent I. & A., this rock ran, in the state they shipped it, from 4½ to 6 per cent I. & A.
Of course the manufacturers had bought blue rock for $2.25, and knew they were getting it at very nearly the cost of production, and when they saw the “snap” the miner had, they took thestick this excess of I. & A. gave them and proceeded to beat the price down with it until $1.25 and eventually $1.00 per ton were common prices.
Capitalists were rendered more timid than ever before, and even astute phosphate man that he was Col. D. B. Cooper threw up both hands and quit. He said, “Boys, if that is phosphate, the whole basin of Middle Tennessee is full of it, and it will never be worth mining, as every farmer will pick it up off the ground and haul it to the railroad.”
Mr. John S. O’Neal, in a paper presented to the Engineering Association of the South, as late as 1897, said, “the owner of a bed of phosphate rock, is not as well off as the owner of a sand bank, given the same proximity to market.”
The poor fellows in the phosphate business, however, couldn’t get out, and kept digging away, until gradually capital decided it was worth buying the lands after all, and as a result nearly $2,000,000 has been paid for property in the Mt. Pleasant field, about $500,000 in other portions of Maury County, and over $1,000,000 for property in the counties of Decatur, Perry, Lewis, Hickman, Giles, Williamson, Davidson and Sumner. Rock has gradually advanced in price until now 65 per cent blue rock sells at from $2.60 to $2.80 per ton, 75 per cent brown rock at from $3.10 to $3.60 per ton and 78 per cent domestic (4½ I. & A.) at $3.75 to $4.00, while 78 per cent export rock with 3 to 4 per cent I. & A. sells for from $4.00 to $4.25 per ton.
As the prices have increased the cost of production has increased for one reason and another, until now each ton of phosphate rock put on board the cars represents an average cost in labor and salaries of $2.00 per ton. The production for 1904 having been 540,000 tons, the wage earners of Tennessee have profited by this industry to the extent of $1,080,000 during last year alone. On the other hand, fertilizer factories have sprung up all through the interior of the country like magic, and as they now get 75 per cent rock at their factory for less than the freight they used to pay on 62 per cent rock from South Carolina, acid phosphate is cheaper than ever before, and consequently the farmer gets cheaper fertilizer or else better fertilizer for the same money.
The first thing which impresses itself on the mind of almost any visitor to the phosphate fields is the almost universal dependence on hand labor of the simplest pick and shovel kind. This is partially due to the fact that they “just started that way,” and hence the most “experienced laborers” have always done that way; and partially to the fact that after sufficient capital was at hand for the purpose, the varying conditions met with in the deposit made it very difficult to devise appliances suitable for one portion of a mine that would answer the requirements in the closely adjacent portions.
For instance, it is possible in the same open face of a mine to find the overburden varying from two feet to twenty and the rock from a few inches thick, sticking tight to the top of a lime boulder, to fifteen feet in the “dip between two boulders,” while the rock itself will vary from the shaly, partially disintegrated top rock through various sizes to heavy blocks six to eight inches thick and often ten or twelve feet long.
It will therefore be seen how difficult it is to design a machine that will accommodate itself to the handling of this material. The removal of the overburden has been generally accomplished with wheel scrapers. Two companies have used the New Era or Western machine plow with elevator belt loading the dirt into dump bottom wagons alongside. Two steam shovels are now in use, being of the traction type, and occasionally these have been used in digging the rock, though apparently with not sufficient success to justify its continuance. Cableways have never been used to transport the material and this is done largely by wagon and team, though many tram roads with cars propelled either by mules or dinky engines are in use.
The bulk of the rock, however, is dug by the miner with pick and fork, loaded into wagons, hauled out and dumped in windrows on the ground, stirred with a potato plow and harrows, allowed to dry in the sun, taken up again into wagons and hauled either direct to cars for shippingor put under sheds for storage. When an extra good quality of rock is wanted, as for export, a few layers of cordwood are put down and the sun-dried rock put on that. Then, when ready to ship, the wood is fired, and after the rock is cool, it is broken and loaded with forks, when most of the dirt sloughs off, leaving the rock almost perfectly clean.
Some rock can be put from the mines immediately on the wood and burned for export, but generally this will only be a safe domestic rock. Some companies who have water accessible, pick out the large pieces and send them direct to the dry kilns and then the small pieces with the dirt, known as “muck,” are passed through washers, the rock coming out clean, and being deposited on cordwood and burned as above described.
The resulting rock, after being crushed, is passed through screens which separate it in three sizes, from one and one-half inch up going for export, between that and one-fourth inch for domestic, and the dust and one-fourth inch pieces being ground up and sold for direct use or to small factories.
The Century Phosphate Co. has installed a system of dryers and do not wash the rock, but dry it thoroughly in mechanical dryers and then screen and separate it as above.
The reason the larger pieces are as a rule of higher grade than the smaller, is that the dirt and impurity is mostly on the surface of the rock and the greater the proportion of surface to volume the lower the grade in B. P. L. and the higher in iron and alumina.
Owners and operators of mines are gradually turning their attention to labor-saving devices for primary operations, and for systems of reclaiming the immense amount of waste that has heretofore gone on, both in the mining and the preparation of the rock.
One marked step forward in the business is the establishment of a small mixing plant for making complete fertilizers, and the commencing of operations on a large acid phosphate factory, with prospects for additional ones later on.
At least ten per cent of the present output is thrown away to prepare the high grade rock necessary, and this waste will make good 13 per cent acid phosphate, so that every year 50,000 tons of valuable material is absolutely thrown away. This is more phosphate rock than is annually used by any one fertilizer factory in the world, so far as known to the writer. This waste product could easily be transported to a local factory for an average cost of less than 50 cents per ton. Sulphuric acid can be bought laid down at Mt. Pleasant for $7 per ton. The mixing and other preparation will not exceed $2 per ton, so that using half acid and half rock the cost of the acid phosphate will not be more than $4.75 per ton, while it will probably sell for at least $8 per ton. From these figures we appear to be throwing into the waste pile at present material that should represent a profit of not less than $162,500 per annum. That this will be allowed to continue does not appear likely. The question might arise, however, “What will you do with the acid phosphate thus manufactured to keep from overcrowding or at least injuring the market?” I should answer this by calling attention to the immense area of land in Maury, Lawrence, Lewis and Hickman counties, known as “The Barrens,” which are gradually being denuded of their timber for cordwood that is shipped to Mt. Pleasant for use in drying the phosphate rock. There are at least 250,000 acres of this land, which is now readily purchasable at $3 per acre, with the cord wood on it. The wood alone will yield in value more than this price, thus leaving the land clear. Now, it has been demonstrated at Lawrenceburg, Summertown, Loretto, St. Joseph, Hohenwald and numerous other places that systematic and intelligent farming, even with the meager supply of fertilizer (almost entirely in the shape of bone meal) that has been used, will bring these lands up to a point where they will bring from fifteen to twenty bushels of wheat or from twenty-five to thirty bushels of corn per acre. Such lands that have been so brought up readily sell for from $10 to $40 per acre, according to location.
From experiments it has been ascertainedthat the principal element of plant food lacking in these soils is phosphoric acid. The application of 275 pounds of acid phosphate per acre each year on these lands would consume right at our doors the entire output of the proposed acid factory, even if none were sold elsewhere. This appears chimerical to the casual observer, I must confess, but a careful investigation will demonstrate the soundness of the position taken.
A feature throwing some light on the development of the business at Mt. Pleasant is shown by the following table:
The lengths of track built in each year are as follows:
In addition to these tracks, there are about six miles of narrow gauge tracks and about eight or nine sidings and spurs have been built in Lawrence County for loading cordwood for shipment to Mt. Pleasant.
In Hickman County, the N. C. & St. L. Ry. has built and acquired by purchase from private owners about seven miles of track, which it is now engaged in extending three miles farther up Swan and Blue Buck creeks, and some five or six miles of private tracks have been built.
The following table shows the production of phosphate rock in Tennessee, 1894-1904:
With more or less frequency, according to whether the news supply is sufficiently good to enable them to get “their per column,” correspondents fire into the several papers of the State some sensational head-liny article about the new “discovery of phosphate rock at Crossroadsville, 5 to 40 feet thick, analyzing from 60 to 90 per cent bone phosphate of lime.” For fear of being behindhand with the news all the papers copy it, and before the report can be corrected to its proper reality of from 6 to 9 per cent, it has been heralded to the four corners of the earth and its effect on future and pending sales can better be imagined than estimated.
If one will take the reports of the geological survey he will find that every possible deposit of phosphate rock in the State is absolutely and positively located. There will be no new discoveries. Of course there will be much new development, but the location of such development will have been discovered long before.
The principal localities in the State where operations are now in progress, are: Mt. Pleasant, Kleburn, Jameson and Century, in Maury County; Lower Swan Creek, Twomey and Totty’s Bend, in Hickman County; near Gallatin, in Sumner County; Wales Station, in Giles County, and near Nashville, in Davidson County.
The principal localities where developments will gradually take place as the demands of the business require are: Southport, Estes Bend, Bear Creek, Neeley’s Valley, Little Bigby, West Fork,*Baptist Branch and*Leiper’s Creek, in Maury County; Richland Creek, in Giles County; Station Camp Creek, in Sumner County; north and west of Franklin, in Williamson County; Brentwood and Bellevue, in Davidson County; Beech River, in Decatur County; Tom’s Creek, Buffalo River,*Hurricane Creek and Cane Creek, in Perry County;*Forty-eight Mile Creek, in Wayne County;*Upper Swan and*Indian Creek, in Lewis County;*Lower Swan,*Indian Creek, Ship’s Bend, Gray’s Bend, Persimmon, Haleys and*Leatherwood creeks, in Hickman County.
*Blue rock.
*Blue rock.
*Blue rock.
Anything exploited outside of theseknown and designated deposits is very apt to prove either a flash in the pan or will be found to be only worked by the newspaper correspondents at so much per column.
Of the present working localities the principal one is Mt. Pleasant, and while the property owners there are beginning to figure a little on how much they have left, still the prevailing impression that Mt. Pleasant is about through mining is an exceedingly mistaken one. With the present rate of output, the visible supply of the Mt. Pleasant field proper will last for seven years longer, without taking into consideration the Southport field, which is practically part of the Mt. Pleasant field. With the Southport field mining will last here at the present rate of output for eleven years. It is very easy to understand that as work progresses at Mt. Pleasant and the end comes more nearly in sight, some miners drop out by selling, some by working out their small deposits and these naturally go to the other fields above referred to. In none of the other fields is found the persistently uniform high grade brown rock of Mt. Pleasant except Southport, Century and Kleburn, in the two latter of which operations are now in progress, and in the former the extension of the Mt. Pleasant Southern Railway will soon cause development work there.
As these deposits afford practically the same grade of rock as Mt. Pleasant proper, they will be worked out simultaneously with it and will cater to the same market.
With their knowledge that the visible supply of this character of rock is comparatively limited, producers are gradually increasing their prices, and by reason of such increase they are slowly reducing their output and giving opportunity for the marketing of the lower grades in the other fields, notably the Swan Creek and Indian Creek deposits in Hickman County.
This, of course, means that the producers at Mt. Pleasant will make more money from their product, and that it will last a considerably longer time, so that it is safe to say that mining in force will be carried on at Mt. Pleasant and kindred localities for at least twenty years.
During the next decade, to supply the diminution of Mt. Pleasant’s output, will come the gradual development of the vast blue rock field of Maury, Hickman and Lewis counties, and the white rock of Perry and Decatur counties, which form the backbone of the phosphate industry in Tennessee, and whose millions of tons will cause these counties to be considered the phosphate reservoir of the world for the next seventy-five or one hundred years.
The change of base will be gradual and easy, and the trade will have ample opportunity and time to adjust its operations so as to utilize the lower grade blue rock as it becomes advisable and necessary to do so. Its many points of superiority for acidulation and for direct use without acidulation will largely make up for its lower grade, and as a mining proposition it more nearly approaches a technical field of operation.
The blue rock field proper covers a territory bounded approximately by a trapezoid having as its four corners Centreville, in Hickman County; Kinderhook and Mt. Joy, in Maury County, and Lewis Monument, in Lewis County. Traversing this territory are Duck River, Indian, Swan, Blue Buck and Cathey’s creeks, and their tributaries, and outcropping along these valleys and underlying the ridges between them are deposits of blue rock running in bone phosphate from 60 per cent to 78 per cent, with less than 3 per cent iron and alumina, that will aggregate in the neighborhood of 40,000,000 tons.
This field will soon be developed by the extension of the Nashville, Chattanooga & St. Louis branch up Swan Creek and the Louisville & Nashville branch down Swan Creek, with side lines and spurs leading off each, surveys for which have been made, and work on construction will soon be under way.
If, however, the Florence Northern Railroad should ever be built from Florence to Nashville it will run through the heart of this territory as well as the magnificent iron deposits of Wayne and Lewis.
With the above road and a road fromHuntsville on the southeast to Milan on the northwest all of the phosphate territory would be fully developed, and this section of Maury, Hickman, Lewis, Perry, Giles, Davidson and Williamson counties would be the site of more fertilizer factories than will be found elsewhere in the world in the same space.
Contributary to such prospective development is the present opening up of pyrites deposits at Pyriton, near Talladega, Ala., with ore running two to four units higher than the Virginia ores, and while from four to six units lower than the best Spanish ores, it is much more free burning than the latter, and with its advantage in freight rates, will likely give manufacturers equally as good a product at a lower price.
The vein of pyrites is about one and one-half miles long and from four to fifteen feet thick and has been exploited to a depth of 430 feet, the ore improving in quality with the depth. It is reported by manufacturers who have used it to be the freest burning pyrites ore known, leaving only about ½ of 1 per cent of the sulphur in the cinder and containing no deleterious ingredients. The deposits are controlled by the Alabama Pyrites Company and the Southern Sulphur Ore Company, the latter owned by Messrs. Carpenter & Howard, of Columbia, their vein running from eight to fifteen feet thick. The railroad into this deposit has been built from the Louisville & Nashville, at Talladega, a distance of twenty miles, at a cost of nearly $400,000.
The consumption of fertilizers has increased 200 per cent in the United States in the past twelve years, and while the visible supply of phosphate rock is rapidly decreasing, the consumption of fertilizers is almost as rapidly increasing, and with this fact in view, the large fertilizer companies are and have been for several years gradually buying up phosphate lands to provide themselves for the future. This tendency has put a large amount of phosphate property in such strong hands that little or no danger is possible of the old scramble to sell, with its attendant low prices. At the same time, a considerable amount of land valuable for its phosphate deposits is still uncontrolled by manufacturers, so that a healthy competition in the business is still open.
The amount of fertilizer used in Middle Tennessee is almost a minus quantity, but this state of things cannot long exist. The horse worked continuously without feeding soon dies, and so it will be, nay already is, with much of our land in the “dimple of the universe.”
Farmers know that the crops of ten years ago cannot be raised to-day and are all waking up to the fact that something is needed. The large stock-raiser, who husbands his stable manure, can partially take care of the thin spots on his land. But the small farmer, the backbone of the country, whose acres do not afford him land sufficient to till and still have the rich pastures necessary to raise much stock, contents himself with simply wearing out his farm, selling it at a low price, generally with the mediation of the sheriff, and moving elsewhere for better or more probably for worse. To this class the use of fertilizer in Tennessee is practically unknown, but their successors of the next few decades will form, as is the case in other States, the bulk of the fertilizer consumers, and when this comes to pass Tennessee will indeed have come into her own.
The use of fertilizer in the cotton States has enabled the planters to continue year after year to raise the enormous crops of cotton and has also enabled them to diversify their crops by being able to produce the same yield of cotton on a less number of acres.
So fertilizers will enable the Middle Tennessee farmers to raise the same amount of feed on fewer acres, leaving more land to grow up to blue grass, and our present greatly depreciated live stock interests will come up by leaps and bounds until we will rival the famous blue grass section of Kentucky, if we do not far outstrip it.
When one stops to consider (1) that the wheat crop alone annually removes from the soil of the United States more phosphoric acid than is the equivalent of twice the amount of phosphate rock produced in the country; and (2) that over half of the amount mined is exported so that the fertilizers used in the United States return to the soil onlyone-fourth of the phosphoric acid that is taken away by the wheat crop alone, without considering the other crops, we can readily see that the consumption of fertilizer and phosphate rock not only will, but of right ought to, enormously increase, and that the industry is a permanent one that will last without cessation or danger of serious interruption as long as the world eats bread. That it has been and still is being developed almost entirely by outside capital is one of the features that seems to attend the development of practically all the industries of the State.
A complete analysis of a dry sample of average “brown rock,” which the writer had made several years ago, may be of interest, and is as follows:
The rock which is exported from Tennessee goes to England, Scotland, Ireland, Belgium, Holland, France, Spain, Italy, Austria and Japan. The domestic rock is consumed by the various fertilizer factories all over that part of the United States east of the Mississippi River, some of the principal points being Philadelphia, Pa.; Buffalo, N. Y.; Cleveland and Columbus, Ohio; Chicago, Ill.; Indianapolis, Ind.; Lynchburg, Staunton, Norfolk and Richmond, Va.; Memphis, Nashville and Chattanooga, Tenn.; Greenville, Columbia and Charleston, S. C.; Charlotte and Winston, N. C.; Macon and Atlanta, Ga.; Meridian, Miss.; Birmingham, Montgomery and Mobile, Ala.
In conclusion, a word might be appropriate on the subject of the direct use of raw ground phosphate rock as a fertilizer, without acidulation.
The experiment stations of the great States of Illinois, Ohio, Pennsylvania, Maryland and New Jersey have made exhaustive experiments with this material, and their bulletins may be had by any farmer desiring them, showing that this material has given results that prove it to be more valuable for many soils than the acidulated phosphate. The great State of Tennessee, on the other hand, without any practical experiments to back it up, in the face of the opinions of some of its most eminent chemists and experts, continues on its statute book an absolute prohibition against the sale of this material within its borders.
Mr. Cyril Hopkins, of the Illinois Experiment Station, says that the discovery of the Tennessee phosphate deposits is the greatest thing that ever happened for the farmers of Illinois.
Each year many carloads of this material are shipped into other States and wherever it has been used its use is spreading, yet these people have to pay more in freight alone than it would cost the average Tennessee farmer at his farm.
Immense deposits of this rock exist in Tennessee high enough in grade to meet the requirements for direct use, and if this prohibition were removed, almost every county seat in the sixth and seventh congressional districts would have phosphate mills to supply the local trade, just as they have flour mills.
The next Legislature should certainly correct the errors of the past by allowing the Tennessee farmer to exercise the same amount of free agency, common sense judgment as his fellows of the other States.
The principal mines in Tennessee are shown in the table on the following page: