Fig. 16.—Wartime developments in the production of nitrogen. Figures are thousands of tons.
But an investigation working on the basis of geology alone can not cope with the situation; neither can one on the basis of technology alone; nor one on the basis of organic chemistry, or bacteriology alone; nor yet one prepared to employ any or all of these means, but only with a view to some special end. Nor yet again does the discordant grinding of many axes make a noise from which it is possible to gather an adequate comprehension. The nitrogen situation has been inadequately treated because it has been inadequately studied. It has been studied piecemeal, always through the medium of limited means or with some special end in view. It is not a series of technical problems in geology, in bacteriology, in fixation, in munitions supply, and the like. It has to do with a composite economic structure, building for the dependence of society in peace and war alike. Until treated as such, the needs of the situation are bound to be inadequately met and its control a matter of perilous uncertainty. The present discussion makes no pretense of supplying this deficiency or of doing much of anything more than to show the extent to which it exists.
[Figure 15] is designed to show not so much the scope of the resources as their composite functioning in the system of nitrogen supply. The influence of geography in the control of resources so universally available is bound to be subordinate. True, it enables Chile to exercise monopolistic control over the mineral nitrate supply, but it leaves the way open for the development of others; and while acknowledging the fullness of our dependence, as shown in [Figures 16] to [18] and [Table 66], we must not lose sight of the fact that it is so not of necessity, but because we have been content to leave it so rather than undertake to develop supplies of our own. So, too, with political control; what is gained in one direction is, potentially at least, offset by the possibilities opening up in others. Control of the sea gives a control over the mineral nitrate supply as absolute as that in Chile’s territorial monopoly. Yet in the recent great war, Germany, with her shipping obliterated at the outset, was not made to suffer materially from a nitrogen shortage. Britain’s supremacy of the sea went for naught. In the years before the war the force due in season to exercise control over the nitrate supply served only to stimulate the development of domestic potentialities, with the result that when the test came Germany’s proved actually to be the more advantageous equipment.
So it goes. Control over the nitrogen resources themselves is impossible. They are too universally available. Their only susceptibility to control is in the shaping of their development. This is too important a matter to be disregarded with impunity and left to develop without guidance. The modern nation that does so courts the irrepressible disaster of a nation at war but bereft of the means not only of waging war but of maintaining a food supply as well. From [Figure 16] may be gathered the quality of attention given the matter of domestic supply by the different nations immediately before and during the war. Germany, it will be observed, heeded the call to give the matter special attention well before the war and had an independent system of supply developed in readiness, drawing upon the atmosphere and coal-product nitrogen with the results already chronicled. Great Britain did not ignore the importance of nitrogen, but placed reliance on her supremacy of the sea and paid little or no attention to shaping the course of developments. Nor did its importance go unheeded elsewhere abroad, and the foothold gained for fixation in France, Italy, Austria, Russia, and Japan was, it is safe to say, not wholly automatic. The United States alone among the great nations up to the outbreak of hostilities in Europe in 1914 neglected to take any special precautions whatever.
Fig. 17.—Nitrogen developments in the United States. 1. Wartime expansion for munitions manufacture. 2. Field of competitive opportunity for Chilean nitrate, air nitrate fixation, improved coal-fuel practice, shale-oil ammonia, bacterial fixation, improved sanitation, etc. 3. Field of opportunity reserved to coke-oven recovery. 4. Developments indicated for coke-oven recovery.
Fig. 18.—Nitrogen developments for the world, 1900-1918.
The war, when it came, far exceeded all expectations as to magnitude, and so in consequence did the demand for specially developed nitrogen supplies. To meet the emergency, some could be deflected from agricultural channels, but nothing like what was required, for food was just as important as munitions. The organic sources offered no help. Rather they were a hindrance; for organic nitrogen, broadly speaking, comes as a by-product of sanitation, and as such develops as the outgrowth of civilization’s refinements. There was a measurable response from the carboniferous sources, but these could not be made to meet the emergency, for, being of by-product order, the supply is determined not in response to the demand for nitrogen but for the major products. Dependence on the native mineral source in Chile was out of the question, or at least precarious for any country except Great Britain. Accordingly, of the four great sources it remained for atmospheric nitrogen to meet the emergency. Thus, the war in bringing the nitrogen situation emphatically to the fore, communicated practically the whole weight of its tremendous impetus to development in the one direction of fixation. The result is shown in [Figure 18].