The Waterbury Democrat., 1940-08-27
Strategic Metal
 Must Come Half Way Around World
First of two articles on tin, viz tai metal in American rearming.
BY TOM WOLF


 NEA Service Staff Correspondent
 New York, Aug. 27-The wheels of American industry and defense roll on tin.
 Gears and bearings which make the Machine Age possible, on hand through which machine energy is transferred from engine source to utilization, are compounded from tin.
 Tin, most maligned but most stra- logically vital of all metals, put the machine into machine -ized war.
 Yet rearming America. which normally consumes more than half the worlds supply of this precious white gold," is virtually tin bar ren.
 When the National Advisory De- fense Commission worries about tin, it thinks of such tin-alloyed me- tals as bronze, Rabbit, bearing and solder.
 U. s. HAS
 NO SHELTERS
 More than 80 per cent of the 75,- 900 tons of tin the United States an- nually imports travels half way around the world-from British Ma laya (69 per cent )and the Dutch East Indies. Almost all the rest comes through England's smelters from mines either in British-con- trolled Nigeria or in Bolivia, sole ap- preciable producer of tin in the western hemisphere.
 The United States might get its Bolivian tin direct from South Am erica instead of through England except that America has no smelters for refining the crude ore.
 As early as 1887 the State Depart ment started asking recession troubled Congress for funds to buy a tin reserve. It was not until June 1899 that Congress enacted the Stra- tegic and Critical Materials Act. And the $22,500,000 then and subsequent ly appropriated did not begin to meet defense requirements.
 It is not surprising, then, that one of the Defense Commissions first concerns was for lowly tin. Since its formation in 1887, the British dominated International Tin Cartel has controlled production of 95 per cent of the worlds tin mines. The cartel allots production quotas to the mining countries according to world demand, thereby begging tin prices. .r
 To ths cartel went the Defense Commission, with the aid of the Re- construction Finance Corp. In order to buy 75,000-ton tin reserve above and beyond normal U. s. needs, the commission offered to purchase at 50 cents pound Slightly less than the then prevailing price) all tin offered for one year. An agreement was reached, effective July l, and the tin cartel upped it's members produc- ton quotas to 130 per cent of their normal ceilings-in effect lifting all production restrictions.
 SITUATION LOOKS
 BRIGHT, F.
 The resultant rise in tin produc- tion pleased even the optimists among U. s. tin experts. In the words of one of them: There is more tin for America on the water today than the industry has ever known" The situation looks bright if ..
 The if, of course, is: if the ship ping lanes stay open, for it will take at least a year to deliver the 75,00O tons on order. If the sea lanes are closed, one or all of the following must result:
 (1J American domestic produc- tion must be raised to a maximum estimated at 1000 tons annually, an infinitesimal portion of what's need ed. Past American tin sources, mainly in Alaska, have never yield ed more than 170 tons year.
 (2) A substitute for tin must be found to line cans for civilian uses, releasing for military purposes tin normally used in this manner.
 (3) Recovery of scrap tin must be increased.
 (D America must build smelters