there that it is easily applicable and easily handled. Now, if we can not get nitrogenous elements at Muscle Shoals so far as fertilizer is concerned we just as well scrap it. We do not want it. The thing par excellence that we are driving at is to get ammonia or its equivalent, nitrogen.

Mr. FIES. Well, I think it is a fact that you can buy ammonia much more cheaply than you can manufacture it at Muscle Shoals.

Senator SMITH. That may be true, but let us develop it, and absolutely fix it, and sustain it, that you can get it cheaper from some other company or organization than the Government could do it or private parties could do it under Government supervision at Muscle Shoals. If you once establish that we just as well abandon this place, either sell or dispose of Muscle Shoals.

Mr. FIES. Well, I think under the plan of this commission that concentrated fertilizer can be made that. would be a boon to the farmer. And it does not make any difference whether one of the ingredients, such as phosphorus, is made at Muscle Shoals, or some other ingredient is made there, if it can be economically made. The facilities are there, the water power is there, and as I see it the opportunity is there to do the very thing that you have in mind doing, but simply make another element. And if by doing that you can create an industry in Alabama and give jobs to men it would be fine.

Senator BANKHEAD. What are the usual elements in their proportions in the making of fertilizer, considering nitrogen, phosphorus, and potash?

Mr. FIES. Well, if you will take the United States Government reports for the last year, I mean the last year that they are available, 1928, and they show that 54 per cent of all the fertilizer used in the United States was phosphorous, 23 per cent nitrogen, and 23 per cent potassium.

Senator NORRIS. How much did each one cost?

Mr. FIES. I could not answer that question.

Senator NORRIS. You can say that the nitrogen cost more, could you not?

Mr. FIES. I happen to recall now that nitrogen is very cheap. Senator SMITH. I buy that every year. Nitrate of soda, which is just about 15 per cent nitrogen, costs delivered to the ordinary railroad station throughout the fertilizer-using sections of the country, in round numbers $50 a ton. Sixteen per cent phosphoric acid. That is, that amount available will cost you delivered about $8 a ton. Potash with about 12 to 14 per cent available postash, will cost about $12 a ton. That is the difference.

Mr. FIES. Do you know that under the plans suggested by the governors' commission they propose and recommend what must be feasible and workable I take it, a plan whereby 64 per cent of fertilizer will contain plant food, as against those figures of 12 and 16 per cent that you have just mentioned.

Senator SMITH. I understand. It is just what is called filler. It adds tremendously to the freight and handling. But I have heard of this concentrated fertilizer, I believe a new process that they call Ammo-Phoss, that is 45 per cent ammonia.

Senator NORRIS. Mr. Fies, that leads me to ask you a question about this bill: The important thing after all that would be worthwell, I was going to say all the time we have wasted for 10 years on

Muscle Shoals, is if we could get out of this some method that would cheapen the cost of fertilizer to the farmer. Isn't that an exceedingly desirable thing?

Mr. FIES. Yes, sir; it would be very pleasing, indeed.

Senator NORRIS. Now, every improvement that has been made in the extraction of nitrogen from the atmosphere has tended in that direction. It has cheapened it a little but it is still too expensive; and everybody, not only the farmers, but everybody who eats food, not alone in the United States but all over the world, is interested in getting cheap fertilizer because it means cheaper cost of living. Do you know that the Senate bill that the President vetoed provided for the greatest experimentation in cheapening the cost of fertilizer that has ever been undertaken anywhere in the world, and that there isn't any such thing involved except in the most general terms in the recommendations of the President's commission? Haven't we got to cheapen the cost of fertilizer in some way? And isn't it fair to think that we can cheapen it? The experiments may be very expensive, and lots of them may fail, so that private manufacturers of fertilizers can not afford to run the risk. But the Government can spend public money for the purpose of trying to invent some improvements.

I should like to call attention to what has happened in the Government service in that respect: We have now in the Bureau of Chemistry, Department of Agriculture, a man who quite a number of years ago invented a new process that can be utilized and has been utilized at Muscle Shoals, and that has been adopted all over the world. There is no patent on it. It is open to everybody. That is the difference between the Government making improvements in experimentation and some private party doing it. If some private party does it he gets a patent immediately and the public gets no benefit. It seems to me that the people who are advocating this recommendation by the commission do not realize what they are throwing away, and what has got to be done if we are ever to cheapen the cost of fertilizer.

Senator BANKHEAD. Mr. Fies, will you state your views why you think the Muscle Shoals Commission's idea is carried out will result in a reduced price for fertilizer?

Senator NORRIS. Let me interject right there that Mr. Fies has recommended a use of the property down there that is not recommended by the President's commission. And so far in all the 10 or 12 years of hearings we have had I do not believe there has ever been a witness before us who has made that recommendation, to utilize Plant No. 2 for phosphorous production instead of the production of nitrates.

Senator BANKHEAD. Mr. Fies, just state how you think it will result in a reduction in the cost of fertilizer, if you do so think.

Mr. FIES. I think if a bill embodying the principles of the commis+ sion's report were enacted, requiring the lessee to produce a minimum amount of concentrated fertilizer, with restricted profits, guaranteeing to do it, that the concentrated phase of manufacture would result in a reducing ultimate cost to the farmer.

Senator NORRIS. That is just what the bill which the President vetoes provided they should put in the lease, and as I stated to you a while ago that you were objecting to, because the bill provided that they had to produce a minimum amount and that increased from year to year.

Mr. FIES. I think the bill limits it. That is according to my understanding, although I am not a lawyer, to the fixation of nitrogen at Muscle Shoals, which can not be economically done.

Senator SMITH. Do not limit it to that.

Senator NORRIS. I do not think it does. Let me say to you that I do not want to do that. I will let this lessee have a complete option to build anything he wants to there, any improvement he wants to make. I think that is all in the bill that the President vetoes.

Mr. FIES. Well, that is not my understanding of it, although I may be wrong.

Senator NORRIS. I will say as to the Senate bill, that some compromises were made. There are a great many people, and some of them in the Senate, who still think that you can use nitrate plant No. 2 for the extraction of nitrogen from the air, can do it economically and make fertilizer. You have to respect their opinions. And so the bill provided that they could do that if they wanted to. But they were not confined to that by any means.

Senator BANKHEAD. Let me call attention to subdivision (d) on page 23 of the bill. It is true that it does not require the present equipment, but at least it requires the use of that or the installation of some new form of equipment.

Senator NORRIS. On what page?

Senator BANKHEAD. On page 23, subdivision (d).

Senator NORRIS. Let me again call attention to the fact that if there is something in it which is wrong you fellows who are in favor of private operation put it in. We did not.

Senator BANKHEAD. I am merely calling attention to this phase of the bill:

Said lease shall also provide that there must be manufactured under said lease annually at least a prescribed amount of nitrogenous plant food—

Of course that refers to nitrates

of a kind and quality and in a form available as plant food and capable of being applied directly to the soil in connection with the growth of crops; and that such lease shall also contain a stipulation requiring the lessee to produce within three years and six months from the date such lease shall become effective such fertilizer ingredients containing not less than ten thousand tons of fixed nitrogen.

The point that Mr. Fies has in mind, and I want to be fair to Mr. Fies

Senator NORRIS (interposing). I do too.

Senator BANKHEAD. Was the statement that the bill required the production of fixed nitrogen.

Senator NORRIS. Mr. Fies is of opinion that that provision which you have read, as I understand him, requires them to use the facilities that are there in their production. It does not do anything of the kind.

Senator BANKHEAD. It does not do that, but requires them either to use those facilities or to create other facilities.

Senator NORRIS. The lessee can put in a synthetic process there if he wants to. That is the reason he was given three years' time before he is required to produce it. He is given the time to build any additional buildings he wants to build.

Mr. FIES. It says to use such plants and property exclusively and to make a certain number of tons of fixed nitrogen. I assume that he would have to use those plants in order to make that nitrogen.

Senator NORRIS. If there is any doubt about anything of that kind, that he would have to use those plants, then so far as I am concerned I want to eliminate that. Let the world be his opportunity. I do not want to limit him in any way.

Mr. FIES. Well, I think that might clear it up a good deal.

Senator NORRIS. Don't blame me for putting that in there. That comes from the people who said: We want the blessed initiation of private ownership and operation. They wrote it and they put it in. Now they are here kicking about it.

Mr. FIES. Well, Senator Norris, I am not responsible for its being in there. I happen to be one of the "they" but I am not responsible for its being in there.

Senator NORRIS. I am not intending my remarks to be personal at all. I only want to call attention to the fact that you are not in my judgment in agreement with the President's commission. You have recommended something that they have not. If you are attacking their bill I would suggest that you go into conference with them and agree on something.

Mr. FIES. No, sir. I am advocating the manufacture of concen- . trated fertilizer.

Senator NORRIS. Now, that is a fine thing, and I do not object to it. But we are a good ways from it I am afraid. I would be delighted if we could have concentrated fertilizer that we could have put into a bottle, and stick the bottle in your pocket, and carry it to Omaha, and there make 25 tons of fertilizer from it. That is one of the things I think that will come about if we experiment enough with it. There is no objection to anything of that kind in this bill that we have.

Mr. FIES. I can not believe that this commission would refer to that type of fertilizer and not know as a matter of practical application that it can be done, though perhaps not to the extent that you say.

Senator NORRIS. Just as Senator Smith says, from the very beginning of this investigation more than ten years ago we have had these tables, maybe not this one, because I suppose we have been investigating the subject so long the tables we started out with have worn out, but we have had tables full of concentrated fertilizer and everything which was going to be possible next year, but which never came about. That time may come, and I hope it will, and that is one of the objects of the experimentation as provided for in the bill that the President vetoed.

Mr. FIES. The governors' commission evidently think that time is here.

Senator BANKHEAD. Have you given any study to the Swan plan of concentrated fertilizer?

Mr. FIES. That is the one the commission refers to.

Senator BANKHEAD. Do you believe in it and in its prospects?
Mr. FIES. Yes, sir.

Senator BANKHEAD. That gets all the filler and inert matter practically out of it.

Mr. FIES. It is from 56 to 64 per cent plant food as against an average of about 17 per cent of the fertilizer in this country.

Senator NORRIS. The committee will now stand adjourned until Friday morning at 10.30 o'clock, and then we will go on again.

Senator BANKHEAD. Can not we get through with these other Alabama witnesses?

Senator NORRIS (presiding). There is a conflict of committee meetings tomorrow and next day. I am sorry.

(Thereupon, at 12.05 p. m., Tuesday, February 16, 1932, the committee adjourned to meet again at 10.30 a. m. on Friday, February 19, 1932.)