Two other plants, both to use the cyanamid process, were projected in 1918, and the Government began the construction of both of them. One was at Toledo, Ohio, and the other at Cincinnati. Their combined capacity was to equal the capacity of the Muscle Shoals plant. At the armistice the construction of these plants was well under way, but the Government terminated both projects, at a net cost of $12,000,000. The fifth plant was built by the Bureau of Mines for the Chemical Warfare Service at Saltville, Virginia. It used the Bucher process, producing fixed atmospheric nitrogen in the form of sodium cyanide, a chemical used in the manufacture of toxic war gases. It was about complete at the time of the armistice, having cost the Government $2,500,000. A test run indicated that the Bucher process was too costly to be practicable in normal times. The Fixed Nitrogen Administration, in its report, recommended that the Saltville plant be abandoned, but that the plant at Sheffield and the one at Muscle Shoals be retained permanently, the modified Haber process at the No. 1 Plant to be developed by further research. No. 2 Plant at Muscle Shoals was designated as the principal peace-time source of nitrates within the United States, and the report advised the United States to remain in the nitrates business as a commercial producer of fertilizer material, the Government to operate through a corporation similar to that which operates the Panama Railroad and its related steamship line. This report was based upon research which sent a commission of experts to Europe to study fixation processes there, and which even cultivated experimental farms in the United States to determine by practical tests upon growing crops the fertilizing value of various forms of fixed atmospheric nitrogen. The armistice found dozens upon dozens of American factories and machine shops, both large and small, engaged exclusively in producing the metallic shell used by the field artillery. This in itself was an industry of great size. The industry had not yet attained its production peak, but it was rapidly nearing that point; so nearly so that, during the tapering-off process, the factories working only eight hours of each twenty-four (as compared with the pre-armistice three-shift, twenty-four-hour day), the output was enormous. Take, as an example, the 75-millimeter size alone. In sixteen months before the armistice the mills, working continuously twenty-four hours a day, produced about 10,000,000 forgings for 75-millimeter shell. The same mills after the armistice, working now only eight hours each day and tapering off their work as rapidly as possible, in the two months before the wheels stopped, produced 5,000,000 additional forgings.