Excerpt from Potash: A Review, Estimate and Forecast

The ambition and determination to render America independent of foreign countries in respect to her potash supplies resulted immediately upon the realization of that dependence. It required the hard-fisted methods of the former German monarchy as applied to American importers of German potash to bring home to us the absoluteness of our dependence on Germany for all of our potash. There being no other foreign source to which to turn, the natural reaction was that we should take stock of our own raw materials to see if therefrom it was not possible to develop a domestic potash industry. This resolve found point in 1910 when the Government's surveys of American raw materials for potash manufacture were inaugurated.

Compounds of potash for the most part being soluble, this material was looked for among the natural brines and the products of the desiccation of brines. Thorough surveys were accordingly made of salt deposits, brines from salt and oil wells, saline lakes and salt crusts and deposits of salines from desiccated desert lakes. Potash minerals were located and explored. The great, potash-bearing seaweeds of the Pacific were surveyed and their quantity determined. Industrial wastes were examined and measured.

The value of these surveys to America cannot be measured in ordinary units. They have a value greatly in excess of the millions of dollars' worth of potash subsequently produced and directly attributable thereto.

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