Men and Midas

The U.S. Government last week was engaged in an undercover struggle with the British Empire to correct the wildest paradox of the war: gold, which nobody really needs, is still being mined at peak rates, while other crucially scarce metals are made even scarcer by the tightening pinch in mine labor, equipment, shipping space.

The British Empire has over 500,000 workers employed producing gold; the U.S. has 55,000. Between them they swell the buried treasure at Fort Knox by around 1,000 tons a year. To Britain this now means some $700,000,000 a year in dollar exchange. Gold production, thanks to U.S. gold-buying policy, is one of her chief sources of dollars; and Britain still needs dollars, despite Lend-Lease.

The U.S., on the other hand, needs copper, zinc and lead, not gold. A change for fiscal reasons in its gold-purchase policy is the farthest thing from the Treasury's mind. But the U.S. had another club over Empire miners, and it was fingering this club last week. It can refuse to export any new gold-mining machinery, which many an Empire mine--to maintain and (in some cases) expand production--is still trying to buy in the U.S. Before long SPAB is due to rule on these pleas, and the odds are that SPAB will be pretty tough, will at the least rule out any supplies for expansion of gold production anywhere.

Canada has some 38,000 men mining gold. Officially, Canadians maintain that gold is essential to their war effort; unofficially they are not so sure. In the great Ontario Kirkland Mines District (which produces 16% of Canada's gold) a C.I.O. strike for union recognition has been allowed to simmer for six weeks with no visible Government intervention. With some 70% of the laborers idle, the District has seethed with rumors that they would be shifted to strategic base-metal mines, and that gold-mining taxes would be upped in the next budget. Already Canada has stopped pampering its gold mines (which had been getting special tax incentives, etc.), discouraged new mine development through low equipment priorities.

Since over 30,000 of Canada's gold miners are mining gold and nothing else (the rest are in multi-metal mines), since Canadian base-metal production is still not all on a full capacity basis and other war industries are short of labor, a shift of gold labor would make sense. So far Canada has received no Lend-Lease aid, but presumably will when it runs short of dollars.

South Africa is a different story. Said a South African in the Washington Legation recently: "Do anything to gold at this time and you let loose a pestilence in South Africa." Almost 400,000 men, most of them natives, are directly engaged in producing gold from the bottomless Rand; and the whole South African economy is geared to gold.

This is too huge a labor pool to transfer easily to other mining, but South African economists have themselves raised the question of using U.S. equipment for more useful purposes than gold, and have complained that their gold labor is being wastefully used. Rock-bound old General Smuts is having trouble enough keeping his Union together in the face of political opposition, race problems and fifth columning. Though South Africa may have to limp along with no new equipment, a likelier spot for a real labor shift is Rhodesia, with some 75,000 gold miners. Rhodesia's copper production is a military secret, but is said to be lagging (TIME, Nov. 17). More miners might help.

U.S. gold miners are still busy, but their work is due to taper off. Less than 15% of U.S. gold is mined as a by-product with lead, zinc and other base metals. All U.S. gold mines have had hard sledding on priority ratings for new equipment, and last September, when 0PM gave all U.S. mining operations an A-8 priority for repairs, placer mines (which mine about a third of U.S. gold) were specifically excluded. If U.S. gold mines must suffer for lack of equipment, it is natural that British Empire mines should suffer too.

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