The air-nitrogen industry in the United States is said to be considerably handicapped because the large quantities of electricity required are not available at a low enough price. There are excellent water-power sites in the United States sufficient to furnish many times the required power, but the existing water-power laws are so burdensome that investors will not put their money into power development except on such high terms that the power is much dearer than it can be bought for in other countries. Practically every civilized country in the world, except the United States, had one or more cyanamid factories in 1916. These include Germany, Austria-Hungary, Great Britain, France, Italy, Switzerland, Norway, Sweden, Japan and Canada. Their combined output is about 1,000,000 tons per annum. The cyanamid plant at Niagara Falls, Ontario, which was established in 1909, with a capacity of 10,000 tons, had a capacity of 64,000 tons per annum in 1916. It utilizes about 30,000 electrical horse-power twenty-four hours a day, and three hundred and sixty-five days a year. Germany, at the beginning of the war, produced about 30,000 tons of cyanamid; in 1916 she was making 600,000 tons a year. She is using it both to grow crops and to make explosives for her guns. [Illustration: SUGAR BEET CROP FERTILIZED WITH CYANAMID MIXTURES. GROWN IN CARO, MICHIGAN] [Illustration: COTTON CROP FERTILIZED WITH CYANAMID MIXTURES. GROWN IN SUMTER, S. C.] At the time the war broke out, in August, 1914, Germany was importing nearly one million tons of nitrate of soda per annum from Chile, South America. This supply was immediately cut off by enemy fleets. Not only was her agriculture thereby threatened with a great decrease in crop production but her supply of military explosives was also threatened. Professor Dr. Lemmermann, a famous German scientist, advised his government that unless the nitrogen shortage were made good the resulting crop shortage would amount to 3,300,000 tons of grain. But if people require food, guns require powder, and no powder can be made without nitric acid. It has been reported on good authority that Germany has consumed one and one-third million pounds of powder a day during the war. To make one pound of powder requires one and one-half pounds of nitric acid, so that Germany required for military purposes 2,000,000 pounds of nitric acid per day. From her coke ovens she indeed could derive some nitrogen, but this actually furnished only about one-fifth of her total requirements. For the other four-fifths she turned to atmospheric nitrogen. For it is also true that this remarkable compound, cyanamid, which is a food for plants, can be decomposed by high-steam pressure into the purest ammonia gas. The ammonia can in turn be oxidized to nitric acid, which is the basis of all explosives. Without the fixation of atmospheric nitrogen on a tremendous scale there is no doubt that Germany would have become helpless before her enemies within