The Waterbury Democrat., 1941-01-03

bottleneck now plaguing u
 Another is the lack of sheet brass, out of which shell casing is made.
 As in the case of aluminium Defense chiefs are misunderstanding the brass shortage. But it is so grave that experts admit privately that it may become necessary to curtail consumption for civilian purposes in order to meet. the steadily soaring military demand. In fact, brass may be one of the first base metals to be put on the military priority list.
 Cause of the shortage is two-
 fold:
 1. Lack of sufficient zinc
 smelling facilities. Zinc is an
 essential ore in brass, which in
 turn is essential in the manu-
 facture of all ammunition cas-
 ings, from bullets for small arms
 to giant shells for the heaviest
 cannon.
 z. shortage ot brass manu-
 featuring facilities.
 The two are inter-related and
 there can be no improvement
 in one unless the other also is
 remedied. There is no dearth of
 zinc ore or scrap zinc, which are
 in plentiful supply. The bottle
 neck is in smelling and brass
 making plants.
 At present the United States has some twenty-odd primary slab zinc smelters and five so-calied secondary smelters, which use scrap zinc instead of ore. Their combined output is 450,000 tons far short of the American and British defense requirements al- ready specified.
 Meanwhile our own shell needs and those of the British increase daily. To meet this, brass man. ufacturers are hurreidly expand ing their rolling mill facilities also adding machinery to turn out castings. But all this will be useless unless they can get more smelted zinc.
 In a belated move to deal with this menacing situation, the De- fense Commission several weeks ago granted certificate of neces- sity" to a large zinc smeiter at Amarillo, Texas, for an addition to it's plant. That will help-when the plant is finished. But even then it will be far from enough. ALUMINIUM MONOPLY
 Independent producers charge that the zinc delay is caused by the same factor which has held up aluminium, namely-mono
 They assert that the big opera ators don't want new competitors in the field and operate under cover to bar them, through stra- tegetically placed influences in the Defense Commission. The independents allege that this is particularly true of aluminium, over which the Aluminium Corporation of America has virtual monopoly.
 The independents charge that the aluminium experts on the National Defense Commission are Aluminium Corporation men and that they are poOh-p -pOOhing short Outcries in order to keep out rivals.
 Plane producers and Army Air Corps chiefs for months asked for increased aluminium supplies, but the aluminium experts on the De- fenSe Commission SteadfaStly de- nied there was a shortage or any danger of it.
 The day after The Washington Merry-Go-R Round brought the situation into the open, by re- vealing that the Air Corps had written @ private memoranum complaining about the aluminium shortage, the Northrop Aircraft Corporation, which had submitted private warnings weeks before. openly announced that 1t was compelled to lay off workers and curtail output because of lack of the vital material.
 CONGRESS OPENS
 WITHOUT PRAYER
 It passed almost unnoticed, but for the first time in the memory of congressional veterans the House of Representatives opened the other day without prayer.
 This was due to confusion over the seating of the sneaker pro tenn. Rep. Bob Ramspeck of Georgia.