"Comfortably Fixed"

The aluminum shortage was officially buried last week, on the anniversary of the first big aluminum scare. Funeral orator was WPB's Bill Batt, who said that while the U.S. was still hard-pressed for steel, copper, nickel, manganese and many other metals, it is now "comfortably fixed" on aluminum. Another WPB man followed through with word that: "We are delivering aluminum to the planemakers now that will not be flown away in a plane until late fall."

Aluminum was the first great shortage scare, as patriotic U.S. citizens who last summer gave up their aluminum pots, pans and household gewgaws will long remember. That drive finally netted 5,715,536 usable pounds. Most of it kicked around until after Pearl Harbor, when it was finally pulverized into thermite for millions of incendiary bombs, some of which probably smashed down on Essen and Emden last week. At the same time that the old aluminum was at last coming to an honorable end, Manhattan's smart Gimbel Brothers' store was advertising at cut prices a trainload of brand-new aluminum pots & pans still available from pre-war stocks.

Expansion. In 1939, the last peacetime year, U.S. aluminum production was under 350,000,000 lb. For the following year Aluminum Co. of America struggled vainly to keep up with rising demand through a privately financed program designed to more than double its output. The scare last summer finally brought the Government into action with a Government-owned, privately operated 640,000,000-lb. expansion program, almost half of which will be in production by July 4, the balance by fall. After Pearl Harbor' the President slapped through a second 640,000,000-lb. project, all of which will come in early next year.

The 750,000,000-lb. Alcoa privately owned capacity, the 160,000,000 brought in by Reynolds Metal Co., and all the first 640,000,000 of Government plants will operate on cheap hydroelectric power. The last 640,000,000 will be located near big cities to make use of stand-by power from the local utilities. These will be such high-cost plants that they will be strictly war babies.

With 400,000,000 lb. a year promised by Canada from factories paid for by the U.S., this will supply more than 2,500,000,000 lb. of aluminum a year--all that is needed for 1943's 125,000-plane program.

Still the King. A year ago the U.S. thought a by-product of aluminum expansion would be the breaking of Alcoa's 50-year monopoly. Many other companies--notably Reynolds Metals, Olin Corp., Bohn Aluminum--seemed eager to cut into the field, especially since the U.S. Government was ready to finance them 100%. But Alcoa is now making 750,000,000 lb. and has taken 512,000,000 lb. of the Government's first 640,000,000 expansion and every pound of the second 640,000,000-lb. project. Result: in March 1943 the Alcoa trade-mark will still be on 88% of all U.S. aluminum.

Alcoa has thus come through the most serious crisis it has ever faced--its grip on aluminum practically unshaken. It has had to cut prices to 15-c- a lb. (v. 20-c- in 1937); it has taken on operating contracts for Government-owned plants for only 15% of the profits--and that means for practically nothing at all, after paying up to 94% of that 15% back to the U.S. in excess-profits taxes. But Alcoa kept its leadership in aluminum unchallenged.

After the war, however, Alcoa will face increased competition--aluminum v. steel, v. copper, v. magnesium v. plastics. Alcoa will have to find new markets for enough aluminum to rebuild all the railroad passenger cars now in the U.S. every four months, or every year to put a 30-piece set of cooking utensils in 34,000,000 U.S. homes, with enough left over for 5,000,000 miles of aluminum electric transmission cable. It will have to market more tons of metal than all the U.S. copper companies combined have ever sold in a peacetime year. At present prices, aluminum costs $28 a cubic foot; magnesium, $25; copper, $66; and stainless steel $100. Alcoa well knows that after the war it will have to reduce its relative price still lower to find a market for the sixfold increase in its output.

This file is automatically generated by a robot program, so reader's discretion is required.