Evening star., 1941-07-27
National Drive
.ForScrapSte
Anticipated
Junk Scarce at Mills
Despite Big Piles
Over Country
By FRANK MacMILLEN,

NEW YORK, July 26-Now that
the aluminium for defense drive ap-
pears to be a success, there seems to
be a reasonable likelihood that the
Nation will be canvassed for old
razor blades and unused railroad
tracks.
Steel men are saying privately
that that the defense program right
now is definitely hampered by
scarcity of steel and iron junk
known technically as scrap.
Steel can be made without scrap,
of course. but the best quality is
made quickest by heavy percentages
of scrap mixed with the pig iron.
In fact, if there is enough scrap
available, pig iron is not needed at
all
1t has been more than a month
now since the Nations steel mills
hit their record of production at
999 per cent of capacity.
The rate of operations has de-
cllned little since then. and the
shortage of scrap is cited by some
experts as the primary cause.
Shortage Is Strange.
1t Is a strange scarcity, this lack
Of Junk in the worlds greatest mo-
toring Nation; where enough tin
cans are thrown away every day to
match the steel production of some
OF Europe's greatest mills where
skyscrapers and lunch wagons are
decorated with thousands of tons
of stainless steel.
Why, there are Junk automobile
lots out at the edge of almost every
village in the United States where
the sun and the rain are quietly
eating away mountains of fine steel
and nickel and tin and bronze.
There's probably enough junked
barbed wire in Texas alone to en-
close all Europe.
Chicago has one of the most
wonderful water front parks in civil
lzatlon's history with millions Of
cubic yards Of tin cans compressed
INTO Its foundation. And cans are
steel.
There are astronomical quantities
OF rusting scrap steel all over the
Natlon-and the scrap shortage is
growing in vicious spiral every
day.
Higher Prices Desired.
This anomoly is intensified by the
TACT that steel makers. who tradi-
tlonally and bitterly fight for low
prices on scrap, their most cherished
raw materials, now let it be known
they would like to pay more than
they have to.
Some even go so far as to speak
OF the good old days of 1917 and
1918 when they had to pay almost
as much for their scrap as thew
now get for their finished steel
products.
The steel men who talk this wav
preface their remarks with: Il
know you won't believe this. but"
tney are downright embarrassed.
Actually, however, they say thev
are talking sense. They must have
scrap and iron ore in tremendous
quantity to meet their defense con-
tract on time. Some companies
cannot operate at'all without scrap.
And there is plenty of Scrap-out-
side the immediate neighborhoods
OF steel mills. Those neighborhoods
are reputed to have been pretty we'll
cleaned out of everything which
would melt in blast furnace.
The cleaning up process. unfortu-
nately. was not all intended for this
nations defense effort. There is,
for example, the fact that Japan
obtained 100000 tons of best quail
ity melting iron and steel scrap
from this nation in the five wears
before President Roosevelt locked
the export door That amount is
equal to about one-third of the
scrap the industry will require this
year.
Transportation Is Problem.
Great Britain still gets scrap from
the United States as an aid to her
own defense industries, but no steel
man was heard. to begrudge such
shipments.
What the steel maker would like
to get their hands on is the Junk
of Florida and Wyoming and Maine
and New Mexico. But it will take
a lot of money to get the junk into
the big melting pots of the mills
around Chicago and Pittsburgh and
Birmingham
At present. 2,240-pound ton of
scrap is worth about s1917 at Pitts
burgh and the Government, en-
deavoring to hold down the cost OF
steel making, has fixed a ceiling on
scrap to prevent its further rise.
Now that's a pretty good price
for junk, when you realize that it
has sold for as low as $646 in the
last nine years.
But it's not exactly a bonus offer.
The Magazine Iron Age recently
figured out that a junk dealer in
Butte, Mont, who wanted to sell
scrap at Pittsburgh would have to
pay so much in railroad rates that
he would clear only about s145 a
ton for his shipment-not nearly as
much as he paid for the stuff in
the first place.
Back in 1917, when the steel mills
were desperately in need of the
metal as they are today, the price
of scrap went as high as $3.50 a
ton and throughout 1918 it held
at s29
OF course, if scrap prices 60 up,
steel men cannot hold their prices
on finished products down to the
present level of about s45 for a
2,000-pound ton. And then the cost
of warships and guns and armored
cars goes up-and so does the cost
of razor blades and railroad tracks.