Progress in Steel Scrap

Jesse Jones dipped into his big bag of tricks last week, came up with a crackerjack solution to the steel-scrap shortage: a multimillion-dollar RFC agency called War Materials, Inc., whose only reason for living is to buy at least 5,000,000 tons of iron and steel scrap as fast as possible.

To do the job, War Materials can smash price ceilings right & left. Thus hard-to-get scrap which regular junkmen have bypassed for months (because it was out of reach under OPA's ceilings) will be easy pickings for Jesse Jones. First on War Materials' fight card are obsolete buildings, rusty bridges, broken-down machinery.

Only trouble with this scheme is that many a scrap owner may sniff higher prices, hold out for still fancier prices. Meanwhile WPB had its Industrial Salvage Committees going hot & heavy in 400 U.S. cities. Chief argument: patriotism. Thus Manhattan milliners surprised everybody, chipped in 150 tons of scrap (partly from eight huge hat-making presses); Maryland State officials collected a batch of square-cornered World War I tanks, started them on their last mile into a roaring steel furnace.

WPB put more steam behind its junk-your-jalopy campaign, in New York and New Jersey asked auto dealers and junkmen to turn in at least 420,000 old autos by year's end (normal: less than 100,000). Since each jalopy yields 1,500 lb. of steel scrap, 30 lb. of lead, 25 lb. of copper and 22 lb. of zinc, the junk-auto scheme could mean a fat addition to U.S. metal supplies.

That all this hullabaloo was worth the noise was obvious: the venerable American Iron & Steel Institute last week reported that U.S. scrap stockpiles have dwindled to only two weeks' supply (2,429,000 tons), far & away the lowest ever and 40% below 18 months ago.

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