, and a raw material called
potash, also known as kali. The last is a mineral found nowhere
in the world except in Germany and a few places in Austria. Potash
is essential to the manufacture of many fertilizers, fertilizer
being composed as a rule of potash, phosphates and nitrates.
The nitrates in past years have been exported to all countries
from Chile. Phosphate rock is mined in South Carolina and Florida
and several other places in the world. Curiously enough, both
nitrates and potash are essential ingredients also of explosives
used in war. Since the war, the German supply from Chile was
cut off; but the Germans, following a system used in Norway for
many years before the war, established great electrical plants
for the extraction of nitrates from the atmosphere. Since the
war, American agriculture has suffered for want of potash and
German agriculture has suffered for want of phosphates, possibly
of nitrates also; because I doubt whether sufficient nitrogen
is extracted from the air in Germany to provide for more than
the needs of the explosive industry.
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