The Montgomery advertiser., 1902-09-19
A REVOLUTION IN INDUSTRIES.
Will Be Effected in Getting Nitrogen
 from Air.

Cheap itric acid and nitrogenous pro ducts mean revolution in almost all the industries First, it's value as ferti- lizer is great. In England Sir John I.awes and Sir Henry Gilbert made ex- tensive experiments on their field at Rothamsread. They report that by sow ing the field with wheat for thirteen years they received an average yield or ii g bushels to the acre. For the next thirteen years they dressed the field with 800 pounds of nitrate of soda to the acre and sowed 1t with wheat and the average yield was 36.4 bushels per acre, an an nual increase of H.5 bushels to the acre In plain words, nitrate of soda causes three bushels to grow where one grew before At the Briarcliff farm in New York, where agricultural experiments ar made by State experts, Prof. George T. Powell showed that by an investment of $262 in nitrate of soda the nay crop per acre, worth $l5.30. was raised to $2Ss0.
 Nor will the work stop at the trans muting of air into growing vegetation. Chemists have long known that starch can be drawn from the atmosphere, though up to the present time no prac- tical way has been devised to do this But with the Atmospheric Products Com pany in operation the solution Of smoke less powders and high explosives that are made through it's agency. It lies at the bottom of the celluloid industry, 1t makes the art of etching possible, 1t dis tingunishes pure gold from the spurious and it gives lunar caustic, with which a dog bite may be treated to prevent hydrophobia.
 There is another point in the industry tk ge gl,y nf I< called attention to the senseless waste of oxygen by the modern manufactur- ing plants, which, in order to secure q horsepower of energy, destroys tons up p1h tons of that most important gas In the manufacture of nitric acid by fixing that which is in the atmosphere. large quan- titles of oxygen are created or rather given off in the process and the com pany which has hitched it's wagon to Mi agara Falls may find in this most val uable by-product.
 It was high time that some method of securing a new source of nitrogen was secured Tn the United States alone the consumption of nitric acid Is estimated at 100000 tons year. Of nitrate of potas- sium we imported in 1901 about H 900 tons Nitrite of sodium. which is used in dyeing, is consumed to the amount of %. GOO tons each year. Of nitrate of sodium and nitrate of calcium the consumption for fertilizIng purposes runs into the hundreds of thousands of tons every year in this country alone. and in Flu rope, with it's exhausted soil, far greater quantities are consumed.
 On the other hand every large city in the world wastes millions of dollars worth of the valuable stuff. In England alone the loss of nitrogen is estimated at $S0.0O0,0O0 a year and England is but a small part of the globe. The price of nitrogen products is rapidly increasing and had not science come to the aid of nature, nitrogen would be unnobtainable.
 But nitrate of soda can be manufactur- ed at s20 or $25 a ton at Niagara, and after the big plant mas been in operation for some time the price may perhaps be slightly reduced even from thls low figure. Compared with the cost of Chi lean nitrates at SS750 a ton or the nitrlc acid of commedce at $So ton, the saving is tremendous.