Potash and Klein

Secretary of Commerce Hoover grew downright irritated last week at the jugglery of the German-French potash monopoly. His Prospero* calm had left him. He ordered that $100,000 be given to national geological survey and bureau of mines explorers to hunt for potash deposits in Texas.

Dr. Julius Klein, his director of the bureau of foreign and domestic commerce, had much to do with this anger of the Secretary. Dr. Klein really is Ariel to Prospero Hoover. With his soft, eager voice he had been telling his chief that the German and French miners of potash were about to mulct the U. S. farmer who needs their soluble potashes for fertilizers.

He told that last year the U. S. used 200,000 short tons of potash, that only about 22,000 tons were produced in this country, that the balance (costing close to $8,000,000) had been imported from European potash beds which extend from Stassfurt in Prussian Saxony (under German control) through and into Alsace (now under French control). He told that in August, 1924, these Germans and French had agreed to split the U. S. trade, 65% to Germany, 35% to France (England knew of this arrangement, did not interfere, only warned that she did not want British potash needs curtailed); that in May, 1925, the agreement was renewed to terminate August 30, 1926.

H. A. Forbes of the Potash Importing Co. of America, the U. S. agents of the German participants immediately sprang to defend his principles: "The German Potash Syndicate has absolutely prevented any possibility of the potash market being cornered to the detriment of the farmer. Prices have been maintained at the lowest level consistent with the costs of production and marketing. . . . The syndicate has never restricted potash production. . . ."

Disdaining to answer directly, or perhaps ignorant of this statement, "Ariel" Klein declared that in April the German-French industrial conspirators had made another pact to endure six years after next month. "Furthermore, contrary to the recent press statement of the potash sales agencies, prices have been raised since the new pact was formed, thereby increasing the American potash bill by nearly $1,000,000."

In simpler words, anyone who attempts to controvert Dr. Julius Klein is presumably ignorant. Dr. Klein does not err about facts. He knows them, knows how to get them and, when found, to reduce them to figures, and knows how to interpret those figures to attentive businessmen. Secretary Hoover brought him from Buenos Aires, where he was U. S. commercial attache during 1919 and 1920, to be his technician, his Ariel. People who think that every Jew is a commercial genius and vice versa every commercial genius a Jew have long believed Dr. Julius Klein a Jew. He is a Republican Protestant, born to Frederick and Katherine (Giebenhain) Klein at San Jose, Calif., in 1886, married to Dorothy Bates of Cambridge, Mass., in 1915. He is slender, brown-haired, and has a notably broad forehead.

Potash is one of the sloppy words of English. Originally it meant wood ashes (potassium carbonate). Now it may mean caustic potash (potassium hydroxide) or even pure potassium oxide, an excellent fertilizer. By potash people mean potassium, a, metal absolutely essential to plant life.* When drained from the soil potassium (as one of its salts) must be replaced in the form of a fertilizer, else only weazened crops will result. The primitive farmer manures his plot with stable gleanings and slaughter-shed offal. The Chinese peasant assiduously gathers the dried plaques of cow dung, the desert agrarian those left by the camel. The War refugee, returned to his Flanders or Vosges farm, is not insensible to the value of the bodies rotting helterskelter across his pitted acres. AH these are organic manures useful for circumscribed farms, but not for wide areas.

Here artificial fertilizers must be brought on in the form of some soluble salt of potassium, soluble so that the plant may absorb it through its roots.

If the geological survey and bureau of mines find no potassium salt deposits in Texas worthy of working in competition with the European market, they will try some rumored fields in New Mexico.

Meanwhile a private concern, the National Potash Co., has discovered that oil wells at Paducah in western Texas yield 22% of potash. They sank a 1,600-ft. well, hoping for a yield of clean potash, but got too little for profit. They will sink five more test wells, they said last week.

In North Carolina local statesmen insist that the government should work at a process of recovering potassium from feldspar, a hard, glass-like composite of potassium salts with other minerals (aluminum and silicon). There are great beds of it in the green sands of New Jersey, the Cartersville slates of Georgia, and the leucite rocks of Wyoming. But the present cost of processing feldspar is far more than $40 a ton, the gage for fertilizer potassium.

Certainly Secretary Hoover, prompted by Dr. Klein, is making a wrathful gesture at the French-German potash monopolists. But at least for the nonce it seems as though he will have to reinforce it by more than $100,000 of research. He might threaten some international trade retaliation.

* It is the eighth most frequent element in the world, being preceded quantitatively by oxygen 49.78%, silicon 26.08%, aluminium 7.34%, iron 4.11%, calcium 3.19%, magnesium 2.24%, sodium 2.33%, then potassium 2.28%. All other elements are less than 1%.

* Prospero is the chief character of Shakespeare's Tempest. He is a benign gentleman, always unruffled before storm or calm. He has magic powers over the earths, the airs, the waters, over men and beasts. These he controls through his servant Ariel, a sweet-voiced sprite, who often gives him sage advice.