Well, now, you sell or buy tungsten concentrates on a unit basis; and this 20 pounds of WO, is today selling duty paid on the dock in New York at $24.50 to $25, the average price being $24.75 a unit. During the war the price of tungsten was $24. And when labor and materials and prices were frozen, the price of tungsten was fixed at $24 a unit. But the Government paid to new producers, such as ourselves in North Carolina who discovered this mine as a result of an effort to help the war, $30 a unit. After the war was over, and the Government withdrew from the tungsten market, tungsten went up to $34 a unit in June of 1947. At that time, the representatives of the tool-steel industry of the United States-and this was in the public press, and it is common knowledge-appeared here and said to the Government, "You must open the military stock pile. We have less than 6 months supply of tungsten in the United States. Unless we can get more tungsten, we won't have the tool steel, and the domestic economy will fall flat on its face, and we ask you to open th estock pile."

The Secretary of the Treasury said, "We can't open the stock pile. Congress has the key. It takes an act of Congress to open the stock pile.

Well, the tool-steel industry said, "At least, you can do this: Quit buying tungsten concentrates for the stock pile in competition with us." As a result, the Munitions Board and the Bureau of Federal Supply stopped buying tungsten concentrates, June a year ago, and never bought any until last October. And the price of tungsten dropped from $34 to $24. In the meantime, mining costs, after the lid was taken off, had practically doubled. We had three wage increases, and all steel, everything in connection with the mining, went up. Where you could mine and mill a ton of ore for $12, it was costing you $20. The tariff on tunsten was fixed at 45 cents a pound of contained W in 1922. It remained at that until 1930, when, in May, it was increased to 50 cents a pound. From May 1930 until last May 22, the tungsten tariff remained the same, but it was cut 24 percent under a treaty with China on the 22d day of last May. That was $1.93 a unit, figured in terms in which you sell the product. And the price of tungsten was supposed to drop that $2 approximately. Instead of that, it dropped $10, due to the Government laying off of the market, and the tariff cut.

In 1945, in May, this same committee in this same room was considering this same bill, an extension, then, of the Trade Agreements Act. The late Senator Bailey of North Carolinia was a member of this committee. I suggested to Senator Bailey at that time the same thing I am suggesting to this committee today: the wisdom of an amendment to exclude from the operation of these treaty negotiations and tariff-cutting policies, those strategic metals and minerals, not only the ones in which I am particularly interested, but the others, that are certified by the Munitions Board as being necessary for our national defense, and that must be stock-piled.

I said, "I would like to see that excluded." Senator Bailey said, "I will offer the amendment;" which he did, in this committee.

The amendment was not accepted, on this theory: I listened to Mr. Will Clayton's testimony in this same chair I am sitting in. He said, "You can trust the State Department not to tamper with the essentials of national security."

Senator Bailey, I recall, said, "Well, we didn't trust you, because you weren't there; but we trusted somebody, and we were caught with our pants down at Pearl Harbor. And I do not propose, so far as I am concerned, to delegate my duty to you, no matter how patriotic you are, or to any other living man. I do not feel that as a Senator of the United States I have the right in good conscience to delegate to anyone that duty of mine to see that this Nation is kept strong, and strong enough to remain free."

And I want to suggest to you, gentlemen, the wisdom of such an amendment at this time. Because I want to relate to you exactly what took place.

After the Senate passed the act, and we relied upon the State Department, we were put on notice in the Geneva treaty negotiations that tungsten would be one of the many articles under consideration.

We were accorded a day before the Committee on Information for the Reciprocal Trade Treaty Act. I appeared there; so did the representatives of the other companies producing tungsten in the United States. We testified all of the afternoon under oath, gave them our certified accounts, and statements of our operations, profit and loss, and what we were doing.

When we finished, the committee did a very unusual thing. The chairman of it said, "Gentlemen, I am going to do an unusual thing. I have consulted with the other six members on this committee, and we are in unanimous accord that your case is so perfectly clear that we ought to tell you that we will never recommend a reduction of the duty on tungsten. You go on home and go to work and get this stuff out, which we need so sorely for national security."

Senator MILLIKIN. What date was this?

Mr. LONG. This was in January 2 years ago, before the Committee on Information for the Reciprocal Trade Treaty Act. That statement was not made in bad faith. It was not made to lull us into security. It was made in absolute good faith. And that was their recommendation.

I cannot explain to you gentlemen, I have never been able to fathom, why it seemed wise in the Geneva negotiations to cuit this duty on tungsten. I say that for this reason: The entire tungsten business in the United States is 500,000 units a year. At $30 a unit, that is only $15,000,000. Well, now, we have always produced, for the last 20 years, about 50 percent of what we used in this country. The figures were 52 percent in 1948, and so on.

Now let us assume that China sold 60 percent of it, 300,000 units, and got a benefit of $2 on it, to get $600,000. Well, now, China has never sold us more than one-fourth. It comes from Bolivia, from Brazil, from Spain, from Portugal, from China, and from Burma. Well, now, the sum total is not big enough to affect any nation's

economy.

The same day that the tariff was cut in this Chinese treaty, in May of last year, the Government of the United States was requested by the President of the United States to give Generalissimo Chiang Kaishek $350,000,000. We gave him the $350,000,000. We made the trade treaty with him. And now nobody knows whether you are ever going to get any more tungsten from China. It is, to say the least, extremely problematical.

And in China, the government takes all the Chinese production of tungsten. You are not benefiting or dealing with a Chinese operator. It is exactly, in China, like the gold is in the United States. If you produce any gold, it goes to the Treasury, and then the Treasury does what it pleases with it. The Chinese Nationalist Government requires all tungsten produced in China to be turned over to it. And then the Chinese Government sells it at whatever price they will, wherever they will.

Now, I say to you, gentlemen, in all good conscience, that it is not right to give the State Department the power to require us and our associates, the American producers of these strategic materials, to have to compete in an unprotected market with a government somewhere else in the world. We might be able to compete with an individual in China, but no individual operator can compete with a governnient. And I say, therefore, that we ought to take out of the purview of this Federal Trade Treaty Extension Act, when we pass it, these strategic metals.

Chrome is one of them. You can't do anything for chrome. Chrome is dead. There is not a pound being produced in the United States. It is on the free list. It has been on the free list. You are dependent on Russia and Turkey to get your chrome.

And you can go out West and produce it. It will cost you some more money; yes. But you can get it. Chrome is on the free list. Tin is on the free list.

But there is on your tariff books, and it has been there for many years, a law that says when, as and if in the United States we produce 1,500 tons of tin domestically in any one year, automatically the tariff goes on. Until you can produce some in this country, it doesn't

go on.

As to mercury, the tariff has not been cut, and yet the mercury industry has ceased to exist in this country, after existing for a hundred years. We started producing mercury in 1846, and produced it every year until last October, when the last mines shut down. They shut down not because you cut the tariff. The Federal Trade Treaty did not cut the tariff on mercury. But the Spanish cartel reduced the price and absorbed the tariff, and put them all out of business, and then raised the price to $24 a flask.

We have, fortunately, in our stock pile, a large amount of mercury, and are in a far better position there than you are in respect to

tungsten.

I do not have, and I am not supposed to be able to obtain, the figures with respect to the goal on tungsten. But I can say this to you, gentlemen, from my knowledge of the industry, from my negotiations with the officers of the Government, that we are being put on notice that we are going to be expected to expand, and that the Nation is going to need very greatly increased amounts of tungsten.

You can get that information. Within the last few weeks, this revision of the goal has taken place. It has not yet, to my knowledge, become a subject of congressional action, because it has had to be approved by all the boards before it gets to you; but it has been approved by the armed services, and their requests have gone in.

And it is inconceivable to me that anybody should be given the power to stifle this domestic industry. If you were to cut the tariff on

tungsten, take off this $6.03 that is left on it, there is not a producer of tungsten in the United States at today's price that could make one single cent of profit. We are the lowest cost producers in the country, because we have more tungsten in a ton of rock than any other mine in this country, and it costs you the same thing to mine and mill a ton of rock whether you get out of it 20 pounds or 10 pounds of tungsten. We would be the last ones to go under. But we couldn't take it. And I think that national security demands that you give consideration to what this particular industry is confronted with.

We are little. The sums of money involved are nothing. Even take manganese, which is the biggest one of them, with 1,400,000 tons, or call it 1,500,000 tons, a year, needed to sustain our very high rate per year of steel production. Suppose you pay a dollar a unit for 50 percent manganese. It costs you $50 a ton. Fifty times a million and a half tons is $75,000,000. Well, $75,000,000 is a lot of money to me. But in our great national economy it is not a drop in the bucket. It is a thing, it seems to me, that is right, that I am asking.

I want to give you a copy of the amendment which Senator Bailey offered. This was his amendment, which he proposed in this form 4 years ago. I would like to file it for the record.

The CHAIRMAN. Very well.

(The amendment referred to is as follows:)

AMENDMENT PROPOSED BY SENATOR BAILEY IN 1945

No proclamation shall be made pursuant to this section decreasing the duty or other import restrictions on any mineral or metal included in the "current list of strategic and critical materials approved by the Army and Navy Munitions Board November 20, 1944 (table II, S. Doc. No. 5, 79th Cong., 1st sess.).

Mr. LONG. I would also like to file a supplemental statement, which is signed by myself for Mr. Williston and Mr. Bradley, to whom I have referred. They have assisted in the preparation of this document. Unfortunately, they could not be here today. They had to go back out West to San Francisco.

I have heard it said that "He is thrice armed whose cause is just," and I feel that I am suggesting to this committee a thing that is inherently right and sound. So I feel "thrice armed."

The CHAIRMAN. We thank you for a most interesting statement. (The supplemental statement of Mr. Long is as follows:)

SUPPLEMENTARY STATEMENT BY W. LUNSFORD LONG, TUNGSTEN MINING CORP., WARRENTON, N. C.; S. H. WILLISTON, CORDERO MINING CO., MCDERMITT, NEVADA ; JAMES P. BRADLEY, BRADLEY MINING Co., SAN FRANCISCO, CALIF., BEFORE THE COMMITTEE ON FINANCE OF THE UNITED STATES SENATE IN RE H. R. 1211-TRADE AGREEMENTS EXTENSION ACT, FEBRUARY 22, 1949

In support of our request that in any extension of the Trade Agreements Act, a provision be inserted excluding strategic minerals from any further reductions in duty, and that the statutory rates of duty provided for such minerals in the Tariff Act of 1930 be restored at the earliest opportunity, the following additional information is respectfully submitted:

At the begining of World War II, seven metals were given the highest strategic importance in the prosecution of the war-tin, vanadium, tungsten, manganese, antimony, mercury, and chromium. Of these seven metals, six (all except tin) occur in appreciable quantities within the continental United States although they are somewhat lower grade than the richer deposits abroad. Of these six metals the first one, vanadium, is now an accessory metal to uranium mining and is protected by the Atomic Energy Commission. The last-named metal,

chromium, is on the free list and no action of this committee can provide it with the tariff protection it should have.

In regard to the remaining four metals, it is of the utmost importance that the mistakes made after World War I should not be repeated after World War II. Already the Trade Agreements Act has curtailed the small tariff protection held by tungsten, manganese, and antimony, with serious results insofar as domestic production is concerned. In regard to the fourth metal, mercury, the Tariff Commission has been investigating the possible effects of cuts in the tariffs on mercurials, leading the industry to fear that this metal too may suffer through reduction of an already too small protective tariff.

Tungsten production is a small industry, the annual gross value of all of the tungsten produced in the United States currently being not in excess of $7,000,000. The entire machine tool industry is dependent upon tungsten tools for the manufacture of shells and armament. The future of jet propulsion is dependent on heat-resistant metals with a high proportion of tungsten content. At the present time, as the result of the Geneva tariff cuts which became effective in the spring of 1948, the tungsten industry of the United States is reduced to only four operations and those four operations are operating either at a loss or on the narrowest margin of profit. Any further reduction in tungsten prices or any appreciable increase in mining costs will wipe out the small nucleus of tungsten production still remaining in the United States. With a consistent mining policy and with somewhat increased protection the tungsten industry could supply all requirements from domestic sources.

After World War II, it was stated by some of the highest defense authorities that the Yellow Pine Mine in Idaho, which produced over 800,000 units of tungsten during the war period, had the effect of shortening the length of the war by a year and saving the lives of a million American soldiers. Tungsten has the highest melting point of any known metal. This fact, together with its other chemical and metallurgical properties, makes the substitution of other metals for tungsten almost impossible. The world supply of tungsten outside of the continental United States is from Asia, South America, Spain, and Portugal. Most of the world's supply in the past has come from Asiatic sources, principally China, and the availability of future supplies from that source is, to say the least, highly questionable.

Manganese in small amounts is essential in the production of every ton of steel produced. Without manganese most of our steel industry would be forced to close. Only 10 percent of the country's requirements of manganese are produced within the continental United States and over 70 percent of our current requirements are imported from overseas sources. Of those total imports, 35 percent in the last year has come from Russia and continuance of this supply is now doubtful. The steel industry is faced with the necessity of obtaining new sources of supply within periods all too short for comfort. These are the facts, yet as recently as a year ago, the tariff on manganese was cut the full permissible amount under the Trade Agreements Act. While the manganese deposits within the United States are not of a grade comparable with the richer deposits abroad, at least one operation in the United States is able to produce premium grade manganese from low-grade ores in such a form that it is entirely acceptable and even sought after by the steel industry. The technical divisions of the Bureau of Mines feel that it is possible to make acceptable products from domestic manganese which, once established, might well be able to compete in the world market; but present conditions, with negligible protection, high costs and an uncertain future give no incentive to any member of the domestic mining industry. Antimony. Prior to World War II, the United States was entirely dependent upon antimony imports from Mexico, South America and overseas. During World War II extensive deposits of antimony were discovered and developed within the continental United States and at the present time a considerable proportion of our domestic requirements is available without resort to long overseas hauls. The continuation of our domestic antimony industry is dependent upon tariff protection. The gross value of the antimony produced in the United States, like the gross value of the tungsten industry, is small, only some $4,000,000. Yet without antimony as a hardener for lead, the storage-battery industry, the bearing industry, and the flame-proofing industry would have extreme difficulty in surviving.

In spite of the importance of this metal to the defense of our country in times of emergency, the tariff on the metal was cut in the early part of 1948, and the