I succeeded,
with the able assistance of the consul at Magdeburg and Mr. Winslow
of my staff, in getting shipments of beet seed out of Germany. I
have heard since that these industries too, are being developed
in America, and seed obtained from other countries, such as Russia.
Another commodity upon which a great industry in the United States
and Mexico depends is cyanide. The discovery of the cyanide process
of treating gold and silver ores permitted the exploitation of
many mines which could not be worked under the older methods.
At the beginning of the war there was a small manufactory of
cyanide owned by Germans at Perth Amboy and Niagara Falls, but
most of the cyanide used was imported from Germany. The American
German Company and the companies manufacturing in Germany and
in England all operated under the same patents, the English and
German companies having working agreements as to the distribution
of business throughout the world.
The German Vice-Chancellor and head of the Department of the
Interior, Delbruck, put an export prohibition on cyanide early in
the war; and most pigheadedly and obstinately claimed that cyanide
was manufactured nowhere but in Germany, and that, therefore, if
he allowed cyanide to leave Germany for the United States or
Mexico the English would capture it and would use it to work
South African mines, thus adding to the stock of gold and power
in war of the British Empire.
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