14 BULLETIN 102, PART 2, UNITED STATES NATIONAL MUSEUM. 
hydroelectric power abounds. Its product for fertilizer use must be 
neutralized, and the resultant substance, calcium nitrate, is not adapt- 
able to machine distribution as practiced in the United States. 
The cyanamid process depends upon the combination of nitrogen 
with calcium carbide; it requires less power than the arc process; 
and its product, cyanamid, is directly suitable for use as fertilizer or 
convertible to ammonia compounds. The product may also be 
oxidized to nitric acid by a process successfully applied abroad. 
An important cyanamid industry has developed on Canadian soil 
at Niagara Falls, and the process has met success in Germany. 
The Haber process involves the direct synthesis of nitrogen and 
hydrogen to ammonia. The process is successfully employed in Ger- 
many, where the product is oxidized to nitric acid for munitions 
manufacture. The technical details of the process are complicated 
and involved. 
It becomes apparent, therefore, that the merits of the three proc- 
esses are somewhat dissimilar, and they are not all equally adapted 
to the same conditions. It might be mentioned also that Germany 
apparently anticipated that a prolonged war would be impossible 
without drawing on atmospheric nitrogen, inasmuch as Chilean ni- 
trate could be readily barred, while coal-product and organic nitro- 
gen could not meet her war-time needs. At least it is significant 
that war was declared directly after the successful development of 
the Haber and cyanamid processes in that country, and it is certain 
that there it could not have progressed thus far without them. 
In the United States the need has been urgent for some time to 
draw upon atmospheric nitrogen, in order to amplify our present 
nitrogen supply as well as to insure a relative degree of independ- 
ence of Chilean nitrate. In 1916 Congress appropriated $20,000,000 
to construct a plant for this purpose; but such a plant has not yet 
materialized, presumably because a new industry can not be estab- 
lished in a sudden and abrupt fashion, but must be smoothly spliced 
into the general run of industrial development. This attempt is 
somewhat analogous to the hypothetical case of a wealthy man who, 
after having neglected the education of his son until his eighteenth 
year, offers an educational expert $10,000 to accomplish the desired 
result in a single year. It can not be done. A more stable nitrogen 
situation will come, not as a result of any single stroke of action but 
as an outgrowth of a properly nurtured industrial development, 
whereby both munition and fertilizer needs will be cared for without 
introducing elements of disastrous competition. The immediate es- 
tablishment of a great governmental nitrogen fixation plant, granted 
such a thing were possible, would set up a nonprofit-seeking industry 
in immediate competition with the coal-product industry. The result 
would be that the nitrogen gained at one place would be lost at 
