National Affairs: Plowshare

After ten years of beating, Congress last week transformed a monster sword into something faintly resembling a plowshare. It was the War Department’s $160,000,000 project on the Tennessee River at Muscle Shoals, Ala., a power dam to generate electricity to fix atmospheric nitrogen to make nitrates to make explosives to blow up the Enemy.

Nitrates can also be used to make fertilizer for farmers. Electric power never comes amiss. Hence the decade of debate, which was between men who thought the Government should keep and run Muscle Shoals to benefit farmers and men who thought the Government should sell or lease the project to a private operator. Among the bidders for Muscle Shoals have been Henry Ford, the American Cyanamid Co., the Union Carbide Co., Elon H. Hooker, the Underwood Power Co., the Consolidated Power Co., the Air Nitrates Corp., the Muscle Shoals Fertilizer Co., the Alabama Power Co.

What finally settled the debate was not the sweet reasonableness of Congressmen but the rapidity with which science advances. The boldness with which the so-called Power Trust plies its trade was another contributing factor.

Science helped settle the Muscle Shoals question by making obsolescent that process of fertilizer manufacture which requires water power to make the nitrates. Nebraska’s Norris, who fought the farmers’ fight in the Senate, wound up by admitting that Muscle Shoals fertilizer would probably not be cheap enough. The measure he pressed and got passed last winter dealt chiefly with Muscle Shoals water power, leaving the Department of Agriculture to experiment with fertilizer as a byproduct. The Senate voted for Government operation when persuaded that a Power Lobby had gone to extreme lengths to oppose it.

In the House, the Norris measure was altered by Pennsylvania’s Morin to plump the U. S. squarely into the fertilizer business. This brought the National Fertilizer Association buzzing back to Washington in open, indignant lobby. Their case seemed better than the case of the Power lobbyists and the House consented to substitute the words “fixed nitrogen” for “fertilizer.” The U. S. would make, as it did during the War, the ingredient of fertilizer and ammunition, not the finished product. Government operation of the power plants was retained and, as the Bill passed the House, a $10,000,000 Government power corporation was set up. Any power left over after nitrate-making may be sold to the neighboring South at cost. Also, a new $25,000,000 dam was provided, 200 miles upstream from Muscle Shoals on Cove Creek in Tennessee.

The House sent the Bill to conference with good reason to think that the Senate would approve, the President sign.