Doctor COTTRELL. We are already in competition in the sense of our experts, and we are losing them to these people because they can pay better salaries.

Mr. GARRETT of Texas. I want to know what you would do and how you would go at it. I want you to divorce yourself from everything else.

Doctor COTTRELL. To put it in general terms, I think the best way is exactly along this line, to develop the method only far enough to be able to show these people

Mr. GARRETT of Texas. I do not want you to develop it far enough to show them anything, but I want you to do it yourself.

Doctor COTTRELL. We would have to go into an organization for management

Mr. GARRETT of Texas. I do not care what you have to go into. We have to decide what we are going to do with this.

Doctor COTTRELL. I think we are doing exactly what you speak of. We have started in in our laboratories and we have got a plan already developed down there, and any time that the Government wanted to go into competition with the industry, they could, just as much as any part of the industry could go into competition with itself.

Mr. GARRETT of Texas. That is one trouble we have had in the last eight years, that we have been afraid of hurting some one in the business, all the time.

Mr. REECE. What is the nitrogen production of Germany? Have you the figures on that-the annual production?

Doctor COTTRELL. I have a set of figures here that are probably as satisfactory as any. They are from a bulletin of the Department of Commerce, dated December 15, 1927, giving the world's consumption of fixed nitrogen as published by the British Sulphate Ammonium Federation.

Mr. REECE. How much is that?

Doctor COTTRELL. Byproduct sulphate of ammonia for 1926–27 is 303,200 tons of nitrogen; synthetic sulphate of ammonia about 300,000. They are almost neck and neck.

Cyanamide is given as 180,000 tons; nitrate of lime, part of which comes from synthetic ammonia by oxidization and part by the are process in Norway, 81,000 tons. Other forms of synthetic nitrogen, 133.400 tons. Other forms of byproduct nitrogen, 40,300 tons. Chilean nitrate of soda, 199,600 tons.

Mr. REECE. I had in mind that the annual production of Germany was about 400,000 tons.

Doctor COTTRELL. I think it is even larger than that at present. There was a statement the other day at the meeting of the Chemical Advisory Committee to the Department of Commerce on this subject by its trade commissioner at Berlin that it seems to me it was nearly 700,000 tons this year though that may also include coke-oven ammonia; but I can secure and include that report in the record. Mr. REECE. Representing, of course, both the synthetic and cyanamide processes?

Doctor COTTRELL. Yes; there is over 400,000 in the synthetic ammonia.

Mr. REECE. As the result of that production by Germany; Germany satisfies all of its own demands for nitrogen?

Doctor COTTRELL. I think that is true.

Mr. REECE. Both as respects fertilizer requirements and ordinarily commercial requirements?

Doctor COTTRELL. Yes.

Mr. REECE. If one country is producing so large a quantity of nitrogen, why the necessity for continued experiments along this Jine; that is, continued experiments before we enter into the production of nitrogen?

I, of course, appreciate that there will always have to be experiments in developing the processes along more economical lines; but the thing that strikes me most forcibly is that Germany, a country which came out of the World War in very bad condition, and which before the war was in the same situation with respect to nitrogen production that the United States was in, now has developed its nitrogen production to the point where it is producing nearly 700,000 tons annually and we have not done anything. Every nitrogen plant in Germany that was operated during the war, if my information is correct, is in operation to-day; and of course other plants have been added. We here 10 years after the war, are debating whether nitrogen plant No. 1 should be junked or whether nitrogen plant No. 2 should be junked, or whether both nitrogen plants should be junked.

Mr. HILL. May I interpose, there; and some of the plants built in Germany during the war and that are being operated, are cyanamide plants.

Mr. REECE. Of course, both cyanamide and synthetic plants. But gentlemen come before our committee, and one set of gentlemen say that nitrate plant No. 2 should be junked, and another set say that nitrate plant No. 1 should be junked, a situation that it is incomprehensible to me should exist in this country 10 years after the war, while Germany is producing nearly 700,000 tons of nitrates annually, a country that was presumably defeated and prostrate industrially and commercially when the war closed. That is a situation that is incomprehensible to me; and we are using both processes over here and producing a certain quantity of nitrogen at the present time, and they are using both processes in Germany. No plants are standing idle. But still you gentlemen come before us and say that nitrate plant No. 2 can not be operated profitably. The gentlemen who are sponsoring other legislation come before us and say that nitrate plant No. 2 can be operated profitably and they doubt the advisability of operating nitrate plant No. 1-all experts. It is a rather hopeless situation. You can appreciate it.

Doctor COTTRELL. I can appreciate your difficulty. It is a rather complex situation.

Mr. REECE. But what impresses me most is that Germany is actually producing nearly 700,000 tons of nitrate annually, and they do not have the conditions that we have in production.

If I may ask just another question, are the processes which are used in Germany, the synthetic and the cyanamide as well as other

processes, secret processes, or are those means available to our scientists?

Doctor COTTRELL. The great bulk of them are available. The patent situation is a very complicated one, but that is one of the risks that anybody must take in going in and investing his capital. He must carefully study the patent situation and may even then get into litigation.

Mr. REECE. What I was leading up to by a repetition of what is being done in Germany, and other countries in a lesser degree, is this: That if those processes are the same processes, in the main, why is there a necessity for a long program of experimentation here before we enter into the production of nitrogen, which, of course, is the fundamental requirement for fertilizer production?

STATEMENT OF DR. A. F. WOODS-Resumed

Doctor WOODS. Mr. Chairman, I have been trying to look at this more from the standpoint of a business man than an expert in the engineering and mechanical field, as representing the Secretary of Agriculture, and I secured from Doctor Cottrell and his experts some statements which gave us a picture, at least, of the situation somewhat more definite.

For instance, this table of equivalents contains the fuel required for these different processes as a measure of their cost of operation.

The table submitted by Doctor Woods is here printed in the record in full as follows:

Energy and fuel required by fixation processes (2 lb. coal=1 kw.-hr.)

Annual nitrogen consumption of the United States is approximately as follows:

600,000

500,000

400,000

Worlds Production of Fixed Atmospheric Nitrogen
in Metric Tons Nitrogen per year.

300,000

200,000

100,000

1905

Doctor Woods. The arc process requires 67 tons of fuel per ton of nitrogen produced.

The cyanamide process requires 1814 tons of fuel.

The direct synthetic process-the electrolytic requires 18 tons, and the water-gas type requires 814 tons of fuel.

On this diagram [indicating] are curves to show the rate of growth of these different processes during a period of years. I will submit that for the record. It shows that the direct arc process is just barely holding its own, because they have a big investment in Scandinavia where they make use of this locally, and they keep going at about the same rate. They are not growing any.

Mr. WURZBACH. Just a statement to make your statement a little bit clearer. You spoke of tons of coal?

Doctor Woods. Yes.

Mr. WURZBACH. How would you translate that into water power? Doctor WOODS. I am introducing this table in the record which gives the total kilowatt-hours. I did not read everything in that table. It is reduced for comparison purposes to tons of fuel. Of course, in the hydroelectric plant they do not use the fuel. This table shows that in the arc process 67,000 kilowatt-hours are equivalent to 67 tons of fuel, in the cyanamide process 15,000 kilowatt-hours plus the coke and coal used chemically, and for heating are equivalent to 1814 tons of fuel, in the direct synthetic process, under the electrolytic, 18,000 kilowatt-hours are equal to 18 tons of fuel, and under the water gas 4,500 kilowatt-hours plus the coke and coal used chemically, and for heating, are equal to 814 tons of fuel.

This table shows that the cyanamide process has made quite a bit of growth, and then it dropped during a period of years and held fairly on the level, and then began to increase. Cyanamide has a great many other uses besides fertilizer uses. Cyanides and hydrocyanic acid are made from it and these products are used in this country for fumigation purposes, and in metallurgy besides a great many industrial uses, in the steel trade and other trades, so that there is a large and more profitable demand for cyanamide, entirely apart from its fertilizer uses.

The synthetic ammonia process has been moving up rapidly, and since the improved process, requiring a less amount of power, it has grown with great rapidity, so that that process was producing when these records were made nearly 500,000 tons as compared with a total of the world of 700,000 tons.

Mr. JAMES. That goes to show the world?

Doctor Woods. That is the world, yes.

Mr. JAMES. Then you have a statement showing the United States alone, have you?

Doctor WOODS. I think we can get that. But the point I want to make is this, that in the solution of the fertilizer industry the decreases in the cost of manufacture are very small possibilities. They can be decreased, as is shown here, very materially, but the effect of that decrease upon the final cost of fertilizer is not enough to meet the requirements of the farmer for cheap fertilizer. Our analysis of the situation shows that that can be met by getting these reduced costs as far as possible, by utilizing the most economical methods of manufacture, such as the improved direct synthetic ammonia process, which is used now by our American manufacturers so far as