Two of these projects—U. S. Nitrate Plant No. 1, at Sheffield, Alabama, and U. S. Nitrate Plant No. 2, on the Tennessee River at Muscle Shoals, Alabama—were both completed before the signing of the Armistice. Plant No. 1, which has a capacity of about 22,000 tons of ammonium nitrate a year, cost approximately $13,000,000. Plant No. 2 makes five times that amount of ammonium nitrate and cost five times that sum. Plant No. 3, at East Toledo, Ohio, and Plant No. 4, at Ancor, near Cincinnati, were about one-quarter completed when the Armistice was signed, but, because of the changed conditions governing the supply of Chilean nitrates as well as the facilities which we now possess in Alabama for manufacturing them ourselves, they have been discontinued. In addition to these enormous projects, a chemical plant was erected at Saltville, Virginia, at a cost of $2,750,000, for the manufacture of sodium cyanide to be used in the production of poison-gas. Though no operations are now (May, 1919) being carried on at any of these plants, it is believed that their products will be in wide demand for farm fertilizers, a project being under consideration whereby nitrates can be produced at these plants and sold to farmers at about three-quarters of the price paid for the Chilean product. This chapter already so bristles with statistics that a few more can do no harm. They may open your eyes, moreover, to the magnitude of our preparations for producing nitrates—a project which has cost the American people more than $120,000,000, but of which not 1 in 10,000 of them has so much as heard. Take Plant No. 2, at Muscle Shoals, for example. I would be willing to wager almost anything you please that you have never heard of Muscle Shoals before. For your information it is on the Tennessee River, in northern Alabama, about midway between Nashville and Chattanooga. The power-house of this plant, with its capacity of 135,000 horse-power, has the largest annual output of any steam-power plant in the world, developing two-thirds as much power as all the hydroelectric plants at Niagara Falls put together. It contains a 90,000 horse-power steam-turbine—the largest ever built. The ammonia-gas plant is the largest in the world. The liquid-air plant is five times larger than any other installation of its kind in existence. At its peak the camp at Muscle Shoals had a total population of 21,000. One of its score or more of mess-halls seats 4,000 persons at one time; in it 750 gallons of soup have been prepared and 2 tons of meat have been roasted for a single meal. More than a thousand hogs were raised on the waste from this mess-hall alone. (Attention of Mr. Hoover!) The camp laundry washed 6,000 blankets in a single day. That may give you some idea of the labor and money involved in preparing to make our own nitrates. * * * * *