tive agreement. I doubt if a man 10 miles away could be shown he had an interest in the matter.

Mr. HARE. Do not these deposits lie in strata?

Mr. SMITH. Yes.

Mr. HARE. And they do not extend over great areas?

Mr. SMITH. A great deal like oil. They are not continuous over large areas. It might be another bed would come in. Now, the information that we have rather indicates that it occurs that way rather than one well-defined, sharply-defined delimited bed.

Mr. HUDSPETH. Limiting it to a mile would not meet the objection of Senator Sheppard and myself. Would that limitation be sufficient protection to the Government. A man 5 miles away, if you discovered potash within 5 miles' radius of his land, might he not be inclined to hold up the Government? You can limit it to a mile if you think that is sufficient protection to the Government.

Mr. COLTON. Say 5 miles radius where the drilling is on privately owned lands?

Mr. SMITH. I think that would be a good amendment.

Mr. WILLIAMSON. Privately owned lands are scattered among public owned lands, as I understand it.

The CHAIRMAN. We can have Senator Sheppard and Mr. Smith meet with us in considering this bill.

Mr. HUDSPETH. I will say to my good friend from Missouri this is not a bill for Texas. We are just as much interested in your farmers in Missouri as in potash in untold quantities in Searles Lake, Calif., or in Utah, to have an adequate supply for the entire United States. I would be glad to see $500,000 authorized, as provided in Senator Sheppard's bill, but this is the best we can get by the Bureau of the Budget.

Mr. MANLOVE. I am not only interested in Missouri-we do not have potash but I am interested in Texas or any place that can develop potash.

Mr. FREE. I understand the Budget and the President will go along for $100,000.

Mr. HUDSPETH. Mr. Hoover so stated to us and General Lord so stated.

Mr. SMITH. In line with precedents established at previous hearings, I am glad to be able to present from the Government Printing Office some proofs of our latest report on the subject. It is in page proof and I have copies enough for members of the committee, and it discusses the matter of test drillings. I am not offering it to be put into the record, but for your own information.

The CHAIRMAN. If it is information on this point, we will want it in the record.

Mr. SMITH, Mr. Mansfield has been heard before, and while you might want to ask him some questions, it might be well to hear some of the other people you have not heard. Mr. Mansfield has charge of the work we have done.

The CHAIRMAN. We will hear Mr. Mansfield briefly.

Mr. SMITH. I think I have given the impression that I am anxious for some money to be expended under any auspices you choose, but in such a way as to get results by actual drilling and not by any further study or investigation other than drilling.

STATEMENT OF DR. GEORGE R. MANSFIELD, UNITED STATES GEOLOGICAL SURVEY

Mr. MANSFIELD. Mr. Chairman, I have brought along some of the latest reports. I do not know whether you want to enter them in the record, but I will leave them for your consideration. This bulletin, which gives a summary of the work in Texas up to 1922, shows the geological conditions and has some maps showing the distribution and thickness of the salt beds. This is bulletin 780-B, which has gone rapidly out of print, but the reprint is in process of going through.

The CHAIRMAN. All witnesses have agreed that we need potash in this country, and these resources ought to be developed. I would like to hear you on two points: Whether or not this development can come about from private sources; if not, what hope of success will this Federal appropriation have?

Mr. MANSFIELD. It seems to me development from private resources is under a serious disadvantage. The drilling of holes for potash is an expensive proposition. The man or company that does it automatically assumes a big overhead charge. We will say he finds potash which justifies him going farther, and he puts down a shaft and starts mining operations. The fact that he has found potash in that vicinity will at once be noted by other persons interested in getting money from potash. They will profit by his expensive exploration. They may come in and operate on a tract of land near him. They may come in direct competition with him and they will have much less overhead than he has. If he undertook to start commercial operations without knowledge beforehand of where the richer areas are or of the likelihood of getting anything, there would be the possibility of competitors coming into the same general territory and taking undue advantage of the money he has spent.

The CHAIRMAN. You do not think under present conditions it is possible to develop it by private enterprise-that we can not look for success along that line?

Mr. MANSFIELD. Very doubtful.

The CHAIRMAN. What is the hope of success if we expend this money?

Mr. MANSFIELD. I think it will be possible for us to find out how thick and how rich the beds are, and how extensive. Those are three definite things about which at present we know nothing. All our informaton is qualitative.

The CHAIRMAN. Is there any reasonable basis or expectation that you will find those things?

Mr. MANSFIELD. I think we have a very great basis of expectation. We have examined samples now from many wells, probably in 20 counties in Texas, and from some wells in New Mexico. We get fairly uniform indications of the presence of potash in most of these wells. Some of the intervals from which the samples come are 5 feet, most of them are 10 feet or over. Some of them are as much as 100 feet. We can not tell, when taking a single sample by ordinary drilling methods from an interval of 10, 15, or 20 feet in the well beds whether there is commercial potash present. Say we get a sample in which there is 7 per cent of potash. That may come from a 2-foot bed, or a 10-foot bed, or it may come from two 1-foot beds or four 6-inch

beds, all in a 10-foot interval. If it comes from two 1-foot beds with a single foot between, it may be possible to sort and mine the potashbearing material so that by selection a product richer than 7 per cent, say, 10 or 15 per cent, may be obtained. If the potash material were in beds 6 inches or less in thickness, with worthless beds between, the cost of handling it might be so reat as to affect adversely the commercial value of the potash.

By ordinary drilling methods we can not well distinguish the arrangement of the beds in intervals such as those just mentioned. By core drilling methods we should expect samples that show in detail the arrangement and character of the beds. We should have quantitative information on which estimates of mining costs could be based.

The CHAIRMAN. You get that in drilling for oil wells?

Mr. MANSFIELD. The information obtained from oil wells suffices for oil exploration but not for potash. I will show you samples [exhibiting samples].

The CHAIRMAN. Your proposition is to have cores.

Mr. MANSFIELD. I will present the type of samples which we might get with the core drill and the type we actually do get now. Here is what might be called a fairly good sample of potash-bearing mineral, taken by the usual method of collecting samples. That stuff has been churned around in the water and some of it dissolved and removed; it may represent material from borings through an interval of 10 to 20 feet. I do not know how many individual beds it represents, how thick those beds are, or whether by combining material from those beds we could so enrich the product by selection that mining it would be a profitable business.

The point I started to make is this, that if we know what the arrangement of the potash-bearing beds is, we may be able in later mining operations to make a preliminary concentrate in the mine, and thus handle only worth-while stuff.

By way of contrast with the type of samples we are actually getting I will show a section of a core of potash material from west Texas but not in the potash district. This core shows all the details of the structure of the beds that it represents. It can be cut in any desired way and studied with the microscope or analyzed chemically. If the recovery of the proposed potash core is good, and there is every reason to expect it will be, practically every part of the potash-bearing layers and their associated beds can be examined critically. This is certainly not the case with the type of samples we are now getting. The CHAIRMAN. I think it will be well to extend your remarks in the record unless some of the committee have questions to ask. If the committee wants to get action on this bill at this session of Congress, we will have to expedite the hearings.

Mr. MANSFIELD. From accumulating evidence in Texas, New Mexico, and eastern Utah we have reason to believe that the United States possesses beds of potash-bearing salts comparable in character and extent to those of Germany and Alsace and at mineable depth. Our information, however, is qualitative, not quantitative; that is, not such as to serve as a basis for planning or estimating the cost of mining operations. Quantitative information can be obtained only by core drilling or shafting. For purposes of exploration core drilling is preferable to shafting, since for the same money a larger number of

openings can be made in the potash-bearing beds. By taking cores of these beds definite information can be obtained about their thickness and character. Information about the extent of any particular bed will be available only when a number of test holes have been sunk in the area underlain by it.

STATEMENT OF MR. J. W. TURRENTINE, BUREAU OF SOILS, DEPARTMENT OF AGRICULTURE

Mr. TURRENTINE. Agricultural demands for potash and the potash investigations of the Bureau of Soils: Since 90 per cent of the potash produced in and imported into the United States is used in agriculture potash is essentially an agricultural commodity. In that sense the American potash problem is an agricultural problem.

Potash is essential to the best agricultural practice in several particulars:

(1) Its use is of prime importance as a soil-conservation measure, to replace the potash removed as a constituent of crops and that leached from the soil and carried away by rain water. Its use prevents soil exhaustion. It thus conserves our greatest national resource, our fertile agricultural soils.

(2) Potash serves as a labor-saving device in that it enables the farmer to raise more produce for a given unit of labor and of land. It is comparable in that sense to the tractor and other labor-saving devices and it is that advantage of potash use that insures its ultimately universal application to land under cultivation.

(3) Potash is an essential of intensive agricultural practice and an intensive agriculture will certainly result from a continued increase in land values and in scarcity and cost of labor.

(4) Potash has already established itself as an essential to successful crop growing on the gray soils of the great agricultural areas of the East, Southeast, and South, and its use is rapidly spreading over the Middle West, and eventually will cover all of the agricultural areas of the United States.

Present American requirements call for 225,000 tons of actual potash per annum of a port value of $14,000,000. This is only a fraction of that which will ultimately be required. A logical development of American agriculture depends on abundant supplies of fertilizer materials. It would certainly appear the better part of wisdom to provide these under American control rather than to leave the American farmer at the mercy of foreign monopolies.

As a result of 15 years of work-explorations, surveys, and chemical investigations we now have some definite facts relative to American potash resources, their extent, value, and use.

While, during the war years, America developed a production of 25 per cent of our normal requirements and a production capacity of 50 per cent, present production is only 12 per cent of our requirements. Present production is significant out of all proportion to its size in that it is accomplished in the face of extremely formidable competition without any safeguards whatever against governmentally assisted foreign producers and in spite of many severe handicaps, such as high freight rates. It is significant as showing what can be done when American chemical ingenuity is applied to American raw materials.

The potash now produced is derived principally from desert lake brines and in part as a by-product of the alcohol, the cement and the blast furnace industries. It is cheap potash because it is produced with by-products--to share its cost of manufacture. That is the basis of its economic strength.

The complete logical development of the industry as now constituted would yield our normal potash supplies. From the cement and blast furnace industries alone, the potash now thrown away annually (175,000 tons) in quantity approaches our importations.

Among our undeveloped potash deposits-potash minerals-the greensand marls of New Jersey alone contain enough potash within reach of the steam shovel to supply our requirements, at the present rate of consumption, for 1,000 years. Additional quantities in New Jersey, Delaware, Maryland, and Virginia increase this amount manyfold. These deposits constitute our greatest present-known source of potash and possess the great advantage that they are practically surface deposits, can be mined by the steam shovel, require no blasting or grinding and are ideally situated with respect to industrial centers, transportation facilities, and the fertilizer market. The Bureau of Soils has already developed a chemical process whereby the potash and a number of by-products of value and importance may be obtained from greensand, representing practically 100 per cent utilization of the raw material. Supported by side products, the potash from this source will be able to meet the competition of that from any other source. This process is now undergoing practical tests on the pilot-plant scale by an important financial group, with very encouraging results.

What has been done with greensand, it is believed we can do also with the other conspicuous potash minerals, such as the potash feldspars of the New England, the Appalachian and the Rocky Mountain States, the potash shales of Georgia, the leucites of Wyoming, and the alunites of Utah.

In addition to these great and inexhaustible resources are the potash brines of Nebraska, Utah, and California, which we are confident can in part be made to contribute their quotas to the Nation's potash supplies.

The problem of obtaining potash from these American sources is one of by-products--other products obtained simultaneously to share the production costs-for without them potash can not be produced cheaply enough to compete in an unrestricted market. This makes potash recovery a chemical problem.

To develop such chemical proceesss of extraction is the objective of researches now being carried on in the fertilizer division of the Bureau of Soils. For this work the annual allotment of funds is now less than $10,000. The sum provided by the bill under consideration would make possible the more aggressive prosecution of this work and the more rapid accumulation of fundamental data to aid in the development of this infant industry. We believe it would serve materially to hasten the day of American independence with respect to a vitally essential commodity, for supplies of which American agriculture is still at the mercy of a foreign monopoly.

The CHAIRMAN. What do you think are the prospects of finding potash in Texas as suggested?