The people's voice. [volume] (Helena, Mont.) 1939-1969, 1957-12-20
Government to Begin
Inquiry Of Stockpi|ing

all other stockpile items?
These are just few of the puzzlers
awaiting the Special Stockpile Adj
visory Committee appointed October
| 81 by Defense Mobilizer Gordon
Gray.
Confronting them is an accumula-
ton of products and problems so big
it staggers the imagination.
STOCKPILE CONTENTS
The hoard of minerals, metals, rub
Der and other war materials is worth
half billion dollars more than the
much publicized farm surplus. It's
most important component (85 per
cent of the total dollar value), the
Strategic Stockpile, contains 70 items
like aluminium, asbestos, bauxite, cop
per, lead, magnesium, manganese,
mercury, mica, nickel, platinum, nat
ural rubber, shellac, silk, tin and
tungsten.
goods as castor oil Gan ingredient of
napalm fire bombs), feathers and
down (for sleeping bags) and opium
(for medical purposes).
The 24.5 million, tons of strategic
goods cover % million square feet of
private and government warehouse
space, sprawl over 1877 acres along
side highways and railroads and in
factory lots and occupy 2 million bar
rels of tank space.
The stockpile's annual housekeep-
ing bill is $26 million. A physical in
ventory of it's contents, now begun,
will cost SIS million and take three
years to complete.
Stockpiling got its start after
World War II, which found the Unit
ed Startes short of many vital goods
and cut off from its normal sources
of supply. The Stockpiling Act of
1916 gave the go-ahead to the pro-
gram, and it was speeded up sharply
with the Korean emergency and pass
age of the Defense Production Act
of 1850.
The original stockpile goals are
close to being met. The House Appro-
priations Committee March Is re-
ported that "81 per cent of the mini
mum stockpile requirements are in
the warehouse or on order"
Chairman A. Willis Robertson ID
Va.) of the Joint Committee on De-
tense Production July 80 said, 'It
does not make much sense for us to
tie up billions of dollars in what we
call strategic materials that could be-
come scarce in time of long war
+. (when) many military men
think, if another war comes, it is not
going to last very long"
The Advisory Committees chief
task will be to revise for the sputnik
age stockpiling policies born in the
Korean war period. The advisers also
will be asked to bring some order out
of the chaos of overlapping laws gov
erning stockpile operations.
An official report lists nine major
statutes directly affecting the stock
pile program, making it, one official
testified, difficult . and also ex-
pensive to administer
One example of this legal confusion
came to light May FL, when the Joint
Committee on Defense Production
was told that, even in an emergency,
the President has no authority to take
out of the $217 million sup
ply of strategic goods obtained from
sale or barter of farm SURPRISES I'M
less Congress passes special law to
permit it.
A bill to correct this oversight was
in 1857 but received no
attention from the Senate Agricul-
lure Committee.
Another-and politely ticklish-
problem facing the Advisory Com
mittee concerns charges that some
stockpiling operations are thinly dis
guised subsidies for the mining in
lustry.
Critics say, for instance, that after
pleas from distressed lead
and zinc miners, the President in 1854
ordered the stockpilers to purchase
he two metals past the point of their
minimum defense requirements. AS
! result of this order, in the last half
If 1856, purchases of lead and zinc
~. which +bo =, M IN, ctooLrni1a