Trouble in the West

Western miners can never forget the golden 18905, when high-grade, low-cost ores made everyone richer every day in every way. Today the situation is almost exactly reversed. As against cheaper foreign production of richer ores. U.S. veins are becoming poorer while labor costs have soared to an average $18 a day. Last week, when Eagle-Picher Co. closed its zinc operations in Oklahoma and neighboring states, domestic miners chalked up another example of their deepening trouble. Other trouble spots:

P: Utah, which had 56 producers of lead and zinc in 1948, is down to nine. Park City, Eureka and Stockton, once thriving mining centers, are slowly dying from shutdowns, may become ghost towns. P: Colorado, whose 1950 lead production was 53.5 million Ibs., turned out only 41 million Ibs. in 1956 after a 13-year low in 1955 of 31-7 million. P: Idaho's mine lead production in 1956 was the lowest of any year (except 1946) since 1899. The Bradley mine in Stibnite, leading U.S. producer of stibnite-antimony, a vital hardening agent for lead and alloys, closed down.

Despite these Western trouble spots, the U.S. still has plenty of lead and zinc, with promising new veins opening up in Tennessee and Virginia. But because overall supply is outstripping demand, the Westerners are particularly vulnerable to rising imports. U.S. lead production in 1939 was 421,000 tons v. imports of only 87,000 tons. By 1956 U.S. lead production was an estimated 350,000 tons, while imports had climbed to 460,000 tons. With powerful representation in Congress, miners have tried hard since 1949 to get higher tariffs and bigger subsidies.

For the Government the problem is how to maintain a strong domestic industry in case of war, which has always found the U.S. in short supply of critical metals. Unwilling to raise tariffs in the interests of world trade, the Eisenhower Administration in 1954 stepped up its stockpiling program, set about buying big supplies of the metals for strategic storage. By also bartering surplus U.S. grain for surplus foreign lead, zinc and antimony for the stockpile, the Department of Agriculture aimed to hold down metal imports. While the program helped U.S. miners by raising prices of zinc and lead, it also worsened the problem by encouraging foreign producers to step up production and create bigger surpluses. The net effect of bartering, say U.S. miners, was to increase imports.

The Government is now reviewing the barter system, may curtail or even drop it. While miners would welcome that, they fear an end to stockpiling, which would increase imports and send prices down. Last week, before a meeting of the American Zinc Institute, Assistant Interior Secretary Felix Wormser said frankly that stockpiling, which last year scooped 15% of slab zinc output (an amount almost equaling 1956 imports) off an overloaded market, has met its goals and will end "in a matter of months." The only solution for the miners' troubles, said Robert Hendricks, vice president of the Consolidated Mining & Smelting Co. of Canada Ltd., is to boost demand. Said he: "The producers must engage in extensive research to develop important new uses for lead and zinc and to improve the advantages which these metals already have."

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