At Last

Bill Batt let one welcome cat out of the bag last week. He had just been through the first important U.S. tin smelter, he said, and it looked good to him. "I think it will be able to handle all of the Bolivian tin supply," he continued. "And another thing--in 1940 we felt that this smelter might not stand on its own feet in peacetime; I concluded that it would."

That Jesse Jones's Texas tin smelter was at last actually ready to run was good news indeed. Tin-scrimping manufacturers, who had seen nearly two long years elapse since that "emergency" project first hit the headlines, had almost forgotten there was such a thing in prospect. If it is really going to stand on its own feet after the war it will have to be a wonder of low-cost smelting efficiency, for the Bolivian ore it will handle is strictly grade B, and the British-Dutch tin cartel is no mean competitor.

Bill Batt's good word about the smelter brought to mind some minor bad news from Bolivia. Now that the Japs have cornered 90% of the world's tin supply Bolivia has regretted the 50-c- a lb. delivered price that looked so good before Pearl Harbor. Bolivia is now talking 60-c- at the embarkation point. Before the war high grade Straits tin was 50-c- to 55-c-.

Nothing Bolivia and Jesse Jones's smelter can do can solve the U.S. tin shortage. Though the U.S. has "a sizable stockpile," Batt pointed out, it can look forward to no more than 18,000 tons a year from Bolivia--about one-fifth of the nation's normal peacetime consumption. Ergo, said Batt, "glass and fiber containers are going to have to replace tin to a large extent for civilian use."

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