Subsidies for Miners?

To Congress this week went Interior Secretary Fred Seaton's plan to help depressed U.S. mining industries and also to quiet opposition to extending the reciprocal trade agreements. Under Seaton's five-year plan, which would cost an estimated $161 million the first year, the Government would pay the miners of copper, lead, zinc, tungsten and fluorspar the difference between the market price and a set "stabilization" price. To Canada and the Latin American countries that export metals to the U.S., the Seaton plan is a welcome alternative to the tariff increases they face. The increases, plus cutbacks in imports, have already stirred up bitter feelings, as Vice President Nixon has found out on his South American tour.

To most U.S. metal producers the plan is merely a rear-guard action against the tariff increases that they feel are necessary. Anaconda's Chairman Clyde Weed called the subsidies "unfair and absurd." Said a Kennecott official: "I can't imagine the American taxpayer making contributions to Kennecott and Anaconda."

But Secretary Seaton, who has President Eisenhower's firm support, sees his plan as the only way to keep on good terms with metal-exporting allies, who would be badly hurt by tariffs, while still giving support to hard-pressed domestic mining industries, which have been hit by imports and decreasing demand. Congressmen from Western mining states, who have been agitating for tariff boosts, seem ready to support some form of the Seaton plan, are expected to go alorg with the Administration's request for extension of reciprocal trade. Said Nevada's Senator George Malone of the Seaton proposal: "I think it's excellent as an interim plan."

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