Our mineral reserves

Bibliographic data

Monograph

Identifikator:: 867029366

URN:: urn:nbn:de:zbw-retromon-93011

Document type:: Monograph

Author:: Smith, George Otis http://d-nb.info/gnd/117634530

Title:: Our mineral reserves

Place of publication:: Washington, DC

Publisher:: Gov. Print. Off.

Year of publication:: 1914

Scope:: 1 Online-Ressource (48 Seiten)

Collection:: Economics Books

Usage license:: Get license information via the feedback formular.

34 OUR MINERAL RESERVES. The phosphate reserves in the East are not large, and domestic use can be found for all this material. The States of Florida, Tennessee, and South Carolina have for many years been the main source of phosphate rock in the United States. The output of Florida, the leading State in phosphate-rock production, has about reached its maximum, particularly so far as the hard-rock industry is concerned. The land-pebble industry continues to show a vigorous growth. In Tennessee the brown-rock deposits, which several years ago were given but a brief future existence, promise to yield as much or more phosphate than has already been extracted from them, as they are now worked on a large scale with modern machinery and under modern mining methods. Pioneer methods are, however, still em ployed in some parts of the brown-rock phosphate regions and are attended by a great waste of good material. With the passing of the brown and blue phosphate fields into the control of the larger fertilizer corporations, which practice modern mining methods and have installed expensive plants to treat the mined rock, a gradual change has taken place, and the life of the fields is being thereby prolonged. . The South Carolina field was the first to be exploited on a com mercial basis. Though mining has fallen off in this field it is quite likely that much rock remains for future use. As the most readily accessible material has been removed, the remaining rock will be correspondingly expensive to mine. The product, moreover, being of medium grade, can not compete with higher-grade rock in the manufacture of superphosphate. Hardly any rock is being exported from this field at the present time. The new western phosphate field was discovered in 1906, and although for economic reasons it has not yet produced on a large scale, the main production of phosphates in the future will probably come from the West, where the principal deposits are located on the public domain. Some of the economic reasons that retard the development of the western phosphate fields are comparative new ness, lack of transportation facilities, high freight rates, and re moteness from centers of consumption. Since the discovery of the western fields systematic investigation has been prosecuted by the Survey, and this work has resulted in the discovery of new and important deposits and has greatly added to the known extent of the deposits. Lands remaining in Govern ment ownership that are known to contain valuable phosphate de posits and those that are believed to contain such deposits have been temporarily withdrawn from entry. These reserves are located in Florida, Idaho, Utah, Wyoming, and Montana. The work of sur veying the western phosphate lands is still going on, and it only

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