Cyanamid Oven Room.

Photo by William H. Rau FOREVER RUSHING AND FOREVER WONDERFUL.

Niagara Falls from Prospect Point on the American side, looking southwest, across and up the stream. The American Falls may be seen in the foreground rushing past to make their plunge of 165 feet to the rocks below.

to furnish many times the required power, but the existing water-power laws are so burdensome that investors will not put their money into power development except on such high terms that the power is much dearer than it can be bought for in other countries. Practically every civilized country in the world, except the United States, had one or more cyanamid factories in 1916. These include Germany, Austria - Hungary, Great Britain, France, Italy, Switzerland, Norway, Sweden, Japan and Canada. Their combined output is about 1,000,000 tons per annum. The cyanamid plant at Niagara Falls, Ontario, which was established in 1909, with a capacity of 10,000 tons, had a capacity of 64,000 tons per annum in 1916. It utilizes about 30,000 electrical horse-power twenty-four hours a day, and three hundred and sixty-five days a year. Germany, at the beginning of the war, produced about 30,000 tons of cyanamid; in 1916 she was making 600,000 tons a year. She is using it both to grow crops and to make explosives for her guns.

At the time the war broke out, in August, 1914, Germany was importing nearly one million tons of nitrate of soda per annum from Chile, South America. This supply was immediately cut off by enemy fleets. Not only was her agriculture thereby threatened with a great decrease in crop production but her supply of military explosives was also threatened. Professor Dr. Lem-mermann, a famous German scientist, advised his government that unless the nitrogen shortage were made good the resulting crop shortage would amount to 3,300,000 tons of grain. But if people require food, guns require powder, and no powder can be made without nitric acid. It has been reported on good authority that Germany has consumed one and one-third million pounds of powder a day during the war. To make one pound of powder requires one and one-half pounds of nitric acid, so that Germany required far military purposes 2,000,000 pounds of nitric acid per day. From her coke ovens she indeed could derive some nitrogen, but this actually furnished only about one-fifth of her total requirements. For the other four-fifths she turned to atmospheric nitrogen. For it is also true that this remarkable compound, cyanamid, which is a food for plants, can be decomposed by high-steam pressure into the purest ammonia gas. The ammonia can in turn be oxidized to nitric acid, which is the basis of all explosives. Without the fixation of atmospheric nitrogen on a tremendous scale there is no doubt that Germany would have become helpless before her enemies within a year after the war began, for no nation can fight unless it has sufficient food for its people and powder for its guns.

Sugar Beet Crop Fertilized with Cyanamid Mixtures. Grown in Caro, Michigan.

Cotton Crop Fertilized with Cyanamid Mixtures. Grown in Sumter, S. C.

Turbine Generators, Niagara Falls Power House Eleven turbine generators in the Niagara Falls Power House, each set developing 5,000 horse-power..

The preservation of food is also dependent on ammonia, which produces the refrigerating effect in the numerous cold storage houses and artificial ice plants in this country. In the cold storage plants alone the cold produced by means of ammonia is equal to 750,000 tons of ice consumed per day, while 25,000,000 tons of artificial ice are produced and sold as such per annum. Cyanamid ammonia gas is especially valuable for this purpose on account of its high degree of purity.

Then, too, the ammonia gas can be fixed in any acid desired, for instance, in phosphoric acid, making ammonium phosphate, a fertilizer of unusual merit, or ammonium sulphate, another fertilizer, or ammonium nitrate, an explosive. So, for peace or war, the fixation of atmospheric nitrogen has become a tremendous factor in the life of nations.

If the United States should be forced into war with a foreign power it would be a simple matter for an enemy fleet to cut off our large importations of nitrate of soda from Chile. These amount to about 700,000 tons per annum in normal times and at present about 900,000 tons per annum. In other words, we would be short just this quantity of nitrogen in addition to the quantity that would be required by the government for the manufacture of military explosives. It has been suggested that our coke-oven industry could be expanded to furnish a large part of this requirement, but even with the largest expansion considered practical by the coke-oven people within the next several years, the coke ovens would not be able to supply even one-third of our requirements, thus leaving a large balance which could be furnished only by the establishment of a large nitrogen industry in this country.

The expression "The King can do no wrong" has been widely used since it first caught people's fancy at the time of the explanation, made in England, that the Ministers, and not the King, were responsible for mistakes of government.