Aluminum's No. 5

The select group of four U.S. aluminum producers--Alcoa, Reynolds Metals, Kaiser and Anaconda--last week was joined by a fifth, the Harvey Machine Co. of Torrance, Calif. President Leo Harvey, who claims to be the biggest independent U.S. aluminum fabricator and has long wanted to produce his own raw material, signed a deal with the Government to build a $65 million, 54,000-ton-a-year aluminum plant at The Dalles, Ore.

Harvey had to swim through a sea of trouble to get the okay for his new plant.

He first tried to join the primary producers in 1951, with the help of a $46 million federal loan. But when Columnist Drew Pearson dug up a scandal involving faulty ammunition allegedly made by Harvey in World War II (TIME, Oct. 1, 1951), the Government withdrew the loan, even though the charge was never proved. The Montana plant site and power supply that Harvey had lined up were taken over by Anaconda Aluminum Co., which opened a 60,000-ton plant there last month.

In 1953 the Government, anxious to increase U.S. aluminum capacity without building the Big Three still bigger, decided to try Harvey again. The General Services Administration gave Harvey a letter of intent, offering the company federal help in building a plant at The Dalles. Harvey went ahead and bought 500 acres for a plant site. Then new trouble boiled up. Harvey had been planning to supply the plant with electric power from the federal Bonneville Power Administration.

But an argument arose over who was to pay the $2,038,000 cost of transmission lines, and the deal was shelved.

Last week Harvey agreed to pay for the lines itself. In return, GSA-agreed to give Harvey financial help with the plant in the form of federal loan guarantees, fast tax write-offs and a Government promise to pay in advance for as much as 155,000 tons of aluminum.

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