Word: zinc
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...Utah and Idaho, WMC recently worked out a voluntary "freezing" arrangement with employers and unions: henceforth no copper, lead or zinc miner can leave his job without permission; to make the agreement stick, the War Labor Board raised wages $1 a day - 25% instead of the 15% formula. Said one mine operator: "This is a perfect case of locking the barn door after the horse is stolen." One-fifth of the miners are already gone...
...Jersey asked auto dealers and junkmen to turn in at least 420,000 old autos by year's end (normal: less than 100,000). Since each jalopy yields 1,500 lb. of steel scrap, 30 lb. of lead, 25 lb. of copper and 22 lb. of zinc, the junk-auto scheme could mean a fat addition to U.S. metal supplies...
...Copper, zinc and nickel are cruelly short, with about one-fifth of the U.S.'s essential third-quarter needs going begging. On zinc, in fact, WPB still has no adequate estimate of what over-all requirements really are. And despite Canada's overwhelming share (80-85%) of world nickel production, war industry is gobbling it up so fast that would-be users are being shifted to other metals...
Steel is almost as bad as copper and zinc. When WPB made its allocations for the third quarter of this year, it was able to meet only 85% of the demand for plates and less than that for shapes and rails. More than 50% of the U.S.'s gargantuan steel output is now going into direct military uses. Just over 25% is going into Lend-Lease shipments and new plant construction. The rest is being chewed up by repairs and maintenance, plus essential civilian consumption...
...unhappily, both in tonnage and use, these metals, though strategic, are all pipsqueaks compared to the basic scarce ones -steel and copper and zinc. There are still many doubters who swear that the "scarcity" of base metals is an illusion caused by wasteful use and chaotic allocation methods (TIME, Aug. 3). But so long as the U.S. war machine must have more of them than WPB can find, it cannot run at capacity...