New Britain herald., 1924-04-25
MTRATES MAKE UP
 VALUABLE PRODUCTS
Are Especially Essential in Suc-
 cesSful Farming

trates, given prominent places in re- cent report by the department Of com merce listing the most important raw materials for which America now must look to the outside world, make up one Of the groups Of on-Precious minerals with which Nature has been most stingy. Again nltrates have been in the public eye in connection with the Muscle Shoals dam where the gov ernment planned during the World War to produce them srtificially. Where nitrdtes come from and why they are Of extreme importance in modern civilization are told in a bulc- tin from the Washington, D. C., head quarters of the National Geogra phic society.
 For ages man did not realize how keenly he needed nitrates,' says the bulletin. The plants he grew de- manded nitrogen as they do today, and their roots foraged for it as best they could. Early farmers and gard eners were not chemists; but they were good observers, and they found that manure added to the soil helped their crops So, quite without know ing it, they fed nitrogen 10 them.
 Population Pressure Causes scramble
 For Nitrogen.
 Manure met the needs of the early farmers; but in recent generations the pressure of population became so
 Washington, D. C.,-April s5.-Ni- many, that there was grave danger ol famine or at least the necessity for importing food, even though the land was kept continually busy. Scientists looked into the situation and found that every plant that grows takes cer- tain minerals out Of the soil, and that, in amounts removed, nitrogen leads ell the rest. A ton of wheat, for eX- ample. removes from the soil 47 pounds of nitrogen, Is pounds of phosphoric acid, and 12 pounds of potash, as well as smaller quantities of perhaps a dozen other minerals. IL became apparent that manure alone could hardly furnish enough nitrogen to land on which crops were grown continually. and from which greater and greater production must be had. The realization opened upathe funda- mental demand for nitrogen fertilizer and that put nitrstes on the eco- xomic map.
 No deposits Of soluble nitrogen materials of any importance had been found in Europe, where the greatest pressure was felt, nor in Asia nor North America. But beds Of sodium nitrate had come to light in the nar- row strip of desert in northern Chile, between the Andes and the Pacific Ocean. First opened up in 1850 when the region was under Peruvian and Bolivian ownership. the mining oper- ations did not reach great magni- tude until after Chile annexed the ter- ritory in 1880. Since then the worlds demand for nitrates has grown SO great that by 1913 Chile was export ing between two and three million tons. The World War increased the demand. for nitrate is the chief raw material for explosives as well as for | wheat and cotton, and Chile's desert | deposits kept the guns of the allies looming.
 Mining the Air.
 NO nitrate mines 10 compete with | those of Chile have ever been discoy- cred in the ground Of any country | treat in some countries such as Ger | macy has been threatened from the | air. Nitrogen is one of the most elu- s.ys of the elements. The air all | about Us is rich in it; four-fifths of the air is nitrogen and only about one fifth oxygen. But although our lungs utilize the oxygen, we can do nothing | with the nitrogen. We breath it in. and it is expelled unaltered IL bathes metals and minerals and most organ isms continually without combing with them.
 Science, however, has gotten its Singers on this elusive nitrogen Of the | cir in the last quarters centuiA,. and is abls to imprison some Of it in forms khat make it about as convenient for use in agriculture, industry and war as Chile's product. As in many other recent scientific accomplishments. electricity has been the agent, and some of the most successful 'fxation piants,'-factories for fixing or bind nK nitrogen 10 other substances have been set up near large water power developments. America tried nitrogen fxation at Niagara Falls bout q decade before the World War ,ut was not wholly successful. Nor ray and Germany fared better and urned out some thousands of tons of ynthetic nitrogen compounds in pre- rsr days Germany Produced War Nitrates. H During the war Germany was com letely cut off from the Chile nitrate