Chrome Queen Moroney

Deep in the heart of northern California's majestic Siskiyou Mountains last week a little, freckle-faced, 109-lb. girl was doing a man-sized job for the U.S. war effort. Her name: Dorothea Reddy Moroney. Her business: mining chrome--essential in armor plate, shells and machine tools but now one of the scarcest metals in the U.S.

Dot got into the mining business through the front tunnel. Her father was a doctor who preferred mining to medicine, died leaving $23,000 debts and some dubious mining claims. So Dot went to work, first in a Seattle department store, then in San Francisco, then in Washington as a $30-a-week typist for the old NRA. In her spare time in the capitol she pawed through old mining records, finally traced her father's claims. That got her started. In no time at all she located most of his mines, ousted claim-jumpers, sold one mine to Baltimore's Rustless Iron & Steel Corp. for $75,000 spot cash.

This deal won her the title "Chrome Queen," convinced her that the chrome world was at her feet. So she spent her time nailing down an option on huge Alaskan chrome deposits, running up $700-monthly telephone bills, nightclubbing. Then she stormed Washington, surprised everybody but herself by landing the biggest chromite contract ever: $846,000 for 25,000 tons. Then came trouble. The Alaskan mine was under 30 feet of snow, could be mined only at terrific cost. Dot flopped on her contract, got back to her California mines with only $11 in her worn purse.

Now Dot is less regal but more productive. She uses a ramshackle, ghost-town U.S. post office as headquarters, tears between her three mountain mines in a secondhand $55 down-payment Ford, wears dirty trousers and wildly striped, tight-fitting sweaters (see cut), bosses her 45 employes like a regular miner. She also produces chrome ore. Her Joe River mine turns out 20 tons every day. Last week she opened her Ladd mine, put more steam behind construction at the McGuffy mine. Thus her production soon will be much higher, although she has already sold 3,200 tons to the Government--20% more than the whole U.S. turned out in 1940.

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