Montana Manganese

The strategic mineral the U. S. needs worst and for which it is most dependent on foreign imports is manganese, a coal-like substance essential for hardening and toughening steel. As the world's No. 1 steelmaker, the U. S. has imported as much as 911,919 long tons a year (1937), all but a pipsqueak percentage from Russia, the African Gold Coast, Cuba, Brazil, India, the Philippines. Like rubber, manganese has to travel a long, war-periled route to Pittsburgh and Chicago. Enemy control of the seas would put the great steel industry, vital for national defense, in a pretty fix.

High-grade manganese is all abroad, but the greatest supply of low-grade manganese in the world is near Butte, Mont. In World War I, U. S. producers went to work on their submarginal deposits, by 1918 were turning out 35% of U. S. needs. After the Armistice the cheaper product of foreign mines drove down U. S. production to the vanishing point. Last week from big Anaconda Copper came word that U. S. manganese would go to market again. Awarded to Anaconda by the new Government-owned Metal Reserve Co. was a contract for 240,000 tons of manganese, to be delivered at the rate of 80,000 tons a year. Most heartening news of all was Anaconda's announcement that it had a selective-flotation process for working the ore, that its concentrate would be as high-grade as any bought abroad. Anaconda will put $1,500,000 into a new plant, will be able to produce 100,000 tons a year, take at least one-eighth of their manganese worries off the shoulders of U. S. steelmen.

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