Atlanta semi-weekly journal. (Atlanta, Ga.) 1898-1920, 1918-01-22
NITROGEN
MI ROGEN
The Government Buying Chilean Nitrate for the Farmers
By Frederic j. HaSkin

w ASHINGTON. DC, Jan. 19.-The secretary
wv of agriculture annunces that eighteen thou
sand tons of nitrate from Chile will be de-
lvered here during January for the of American
farmers and that the government has bought in all
100000 tons of this precious substance to be used
in making the soil productive.
This is easily the most important importation
made this year, for nitrate is fifteen per cent nitro
and nitrogen is food Science has just recently
arrived at the realization that every living substance
is essentially compound of nitrogen. And just
it began to appreciate this fact, a most convincing
demonstration of the Importance of nitrogen was
staged in the shape of the world war, which is rap
idly leaving the world in a state of nitrogen star
vation Meat and wheat the foods of which
cannot get enough. They the most common
forms in which we eat nitrogen. And the amount
of them that take out of the soil is depend
ent upon the amount of nitrogen we put into it.
That is why the nitrate beds of Chile loom large
in the affairs Of the world, why shipping that would
save lives in Europe is diverted to bring some of:
that Chilean nitrate here.
This world nitrogen shortage is rendered d.
lemma by the fact that not only eat nitrogen
but shoot nitrogen. 1t is the basis of the high
explosives The embattled countries shooting
their enemies with food for lack of which they
themselves are dying of starvation,
How is Germany cut off from all the world
supplying herself with nitrogen? In all probability
she is making some of it from the air. For this
precious element like the water in the Ancient
Mariner is everywhere but not in a readily disable
Inere are 50,SOO tons or nitrogen IN the at
mosphere over every of ground in the world.
Methods for extracting this nitrogen from the air
successfully worked out several years ago. In
Norway they have been making nitric acid from the
air by water power for some years, and one
pany has been successful~in Canada. But in the
United States, in spite of much noisy promotion and
some attention from congress, the industry of
ufacturng nitrogen compounds from the atmos-
phere has not been developed to a sufficient extent
to be important factor in the situation. There
be doubt but that great quantities of nitro
gen will be extracted from the air in the future,
and thereby the fertility of the soil and the popu
lation which it will support will be enormously in
creased In fact, this is the only possible solution,
for the nitrate beds of Chile, which now the
main dependence of the world, will be exhausted in
a few generations. Likewise the coal by-products,
the animal offal, the fish scrap and all the other
animal and vegetable substances which have
been using fertilizer for the sake of their nitro
gen content are becoming scarcer and dearer. So
that man must extract nitrogen from the air,
or else greatly diminish in numbers. And get it
from the air he doubtless will. The nitrogen prob
lem, as world problem of the future, may be re-
garded as solved. But the nitrogen problem as an
American problem of the moment is far from
solved.
In addition to the Chilean nitrates, the most
important of nitrogen in this country is the