The Waterbury Democrat., 1940-07-31

something about the U. s.
 In cooperation with the National Defense Commission, State De- partment officials are doing three things:
 l. Talking with Jesse Jones
 about an REC loan to establish
 a tin smelter in the United
 States. The U. s. firms in on
 this are Phelps Dodge, National
 Lead, American Metals, and the
 American Smelling and Refin-
 ing company.
 2. Facilitating the visit of the
 worlds biggest tin king, Simon
 Patino, to the United States;
 also holding conversations with
 Mauricio Hochschild, big Ger
 man-Jewish producer of Be-
 livian tin.
 3. The National Defense
 Commission has ordered 75,000
 tons of metallic tin from the
 Malay Peninsula and the Dutch
 East Indies.
 This is almost enough to last the United States for half year If it ever gets here. But the catch is htat the tine is still down in the mines of Malaya and must not only be mined and smeletd, but also shipped half way around the world. Meanwhile the Jap anese may move into this area of the South Africa, or the Germans may crush the British combine which controls Malay tin, or the British may decide that they need the tin for their own military pur- poses.
 ONLY THREE WEEKS SUPPLY
 All of which reveals one of the most inexcusable chapters of na- tional defense neglect in recent history.
 Almost nobody knew that on January l of this year, U. s. stocks of tin were so low that we had only three weeks supply. And few people know what the exhaustion of our supply would mean to American life and in- dustry. Not only would it put an end to our packing of food in tin cans, which is a major in- dustry, but it would eventually mean 8 blackout for every American home not lighted by gas or kerosene lamps. For the contact point of every electric light bulb is made of tin.
 Furthermore, the U. s. fleet would be laid up in few months for lack of tin for bearing re- placements. The same would ap- ply to automobiles, and to many other products intimately woven into American life.
 BOLIVIAN OVERTURES
 Despite this, the State Depart ment literally ignored representa- tions by the Bolivian government to work out a trade agreement whereby the United States would secure tin not from the South Pacific, but from inside the west ern hemisphere, thus avoiding dangerous shipping hauls, and the danger of foreign controls.
 First Bolivian overture to the State Department was made by charge d'affaires Enrique Lozada in June, 1883, at the suggestion of The Washington Merry-Go- Round. At that time, Acting Sec retary of State William Phillis, now Ambassador to Rome, turned a deaf ear. He said the United States was not interested.
 Then the late Rep. Sam McRey- holds of Tennessee introduced legislation placing an excise tax on the importation of crude tin, in order to encourage its smelling in the United States. Whereupon the State Department actually in- tervened to kill the bill, causing its author to protest to his old friend Cordell Hull.
 This mem0randum," said McReynolds, referring to the State Departments memo Op- posing the tax on crude tin, "could have been no more fav- orable to British interests if it had been written in the British interests if 1t had been written in the British Foreign OfIice." OPPONENTS OF PLAN
 By that time 1t had become apparent that the chief oppon- ents of having Bolivian tin smelt- ed in the United states were t1) the British tin monopoly; (2) the Patio tin interests, which were shipping ore all the uay from Bolivia to Liverpool. thence back to the United states, in order to enjoy British monopoly price-fix-