The Winning of the West

For sheer scope, the project that came out of Harold Ickes' office this week made the St. Lawrence Seaway look like a seashore runnel dug by children with holiday spoons and pails. It would harness nearly as much power as the Seaway to start with, and power was a minor part of it. Its economics were admittedly more heretical than the Seaway's, but its urgency was greater too. Its cost was incalculable and unspecified. It embraced 25 States and Alaska. It took Harold Ickes 35 pages merely to outline it in a letter to Senator O'Mahoney. It was a proposal to exploit the unexploited mineral wealth of the U.S.

This wealth consists of high-cost, low-grade ore reserves, mostly scattered throughout the West. Five years ago the U.S. sneered at the absurdity of autarchic economics when the Hermann Goering Works was built to use Germany's low-grade iron ore. The U.S. then had more rich ore than it could smelt. But in wartime every paper resource may be a real resource, and price is no object. If the U.S. is in for a long war, Ickes' adventure into autarchy may mean the difference between victory and defeat.

It Can Be Done. Technologically, the proposal is not absurd. It consists of a hundred or more specific projects, from exploring New York and New Jersey iron-ore deposits to mining chromite and smelting manganese in Montana, all of which have been tested or recommended by engineers of the Bureau of Mines, Reclamation Bureau, Geological Survey or other agencies in recent years. The minerals to be dug or processed are either scarce, getting scarce or imported (and ships are scarce). Ickes outlined his scheme in terms of three bottlenecks it would break:

1) Much U.S. ore, either low-grade or in small deposits, is untouched because no hitherto commercial methods* of treating it have been developed. Ickes proposes to turn small scattered iron-ore deposits into sponge iron by the gaseous reduction process, smelt the sponge iron in electric furnaces.

He wants pilot plants to test other noncommercial methods of treating low-grade copper, lead, zinc and other ores. He wants an electro-development laboratory in the Bonneville and Grand Coulee district to experiment with the local geology.

2) Many a humble-priced ore, now of great strategic importance, has never been thoroughly prospected in the U.S. Ickes wants the Bureau of Mines and the Geological Survey to explore for more copper, iron, zinc, chromite and lead. His experts know of promising copper sites in eight States, lead in seven, zinc in twelve, chromite in four, and Alaska iron in 14.

3) Many a short or shallow vein of ore lies unused for lack of capital. Ickes wants authority to certify borrowers to the RFC to exploit uneconomic reserves of metals WPB needs. If private enterprises are unwilling to accept such loans, the Secretary contemplates (without, he says, enthusiasm) direct exploitation by the Government.

Dolomite and Kilowatt. To get more U.S. manganese, alumina, magnesium, chromium, vanadium and phosphates--all scarce and all vital-- Ickes had fairly specific immediate plans. He knows of 2,683,000 tons of recoverable manganese hidden in small ore bodies; eight mills and three hydrometallurgical plants could turn it into a four years' supply within five years. The Bureau of Mines has a two-stage process for getting alumina from a variety of domestic clays, shales and feldspars; if WPB would specify this process in future alumina plants instead of the commercial Bayer process, it would save the long bauxite haul from Dutch Guiana. The Bureau also has three new processes for producing magnesium.

To power all the new mines, mills and smelters, Ickes proposed no less than 17 new electric generating projects in twelve States. Some were waterpower projects, others steam; their total cost would be $270,000,000 in normal times but $350,000,000 now; they would provide 1,480,000 kilowatts of capacity and would pay out in 40 years (taking their cost at $270,000,000) with rates of around 3 mills per kwh. The 17 projects were merely samples, said Ickes; further study would turn up many similar opportunities throughout the West.

Joe's Hopes. This week few Congressmen had had time to assay all the shimmering facets of Ickes' vast, visionary nugget. But to at least one of them it seemed just fine. Joe O'Mahoney has shouted for years for the development of the West, expense be damned. To him it means not merely more economic independence for the U.S., but industrialization for Wyoming and environs. Ickes threw in another shiner that appealed to monopoly-hating Joe: he suggested that all patents and processes affecting scarce metals, whether U.S.-owned or not, be made available to the Bureau of Mines for the duration.

Joe O'Mahoney is chairman of a Senate subcommittee studying Western resources. Ickes' timely proposal will be put in the form of a bill for the Public Lands Committee to chew over. "I have definite hopes that we are getting somewhere now," said Joe O'Mahoney.

* But Republic Steel is already using New York State iron; and Anaconda Copper and Vanadium Corp. are mining Montana chromite.

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