month giving Dr. Boyd another 30 days, you might be in position to say you could proceed from there, would you say that?

Mr. MITTENDORF. We might be in a position.

Mr. REGAN. Is it reasonable to believe you will?

Mr. MITTENDORF. We wouldn't be taking this approach, Mr. Chairman, if we knew. The engineers who examine the property might come back with the same conclusion that I understand that the applicant's engineers had, "Well, it looks like a Gambusino operation for a while." I don't know what answer they are coming back with. Mr. REGAN. We will have to wait a couple of weeks and ask you again, I guess.

MANGANESE PROGRAM INADEQUATE-NEED FOR ACTION DISCUSSED Mr. ENGLE. Who is your boss, Mr. Mittendorf?

Mr. MITTENDORF. Jim Boyd.

Mr. ENGLE. I suggest we get Dr. Boyd in here to see why he cannot straighten out this thing. We are at a total impasse. Mr. Mittendorf says he is not going to change his ideas on this subject and the mining people, including the gentleman from Montana who came in here and testified, found precisely the same objection which the people who have talked to me spoke of with regard to Deming, namely, that the ore schedules are cooked up in such a way that they won't produce the ore in the lower brackets, and there are limitations on the quantity of the upper-bracket stuff so that anybody who tries to upgrade or build facilities to upgrade will go broke. Why not find out about this, and get Dr. Boyd in here? Maybe we are going to have to go up higher. I don't agree with what Dr. Morgan said at all. We are not trying to make this Nation totally_self-sufficient in the production of strategic minerals and metals. But there isn't any torturing of the Public Law 520 or the Defense Production Act of 1950 or the Excess Profits Tax Act passed in January of this year that can escape the intent of Congress that this administration should do something to get domestic miner production in operation.

We

There is evidence in every one of those measures to that effect. have written it time and time again; not in specific terms, not in terms of a direct mandate, because we cannot ask the executive department to do the impossible, but we can ask them to do something and up to this time nothing is being done. There isn't a drip coming out of the faucet, Mr. Chairman, and after all that is the standard by which you gage the accomplishments of a program. We want to know what is on the ground, how many shovelfuls of it do you have and we pile up more paper, Mr. Shairman, than we have piled up ore in the last 9 months.

Mr. SAYLOR. I think if the gentleman will yield, it is best to exemplify right here in our manganese program and the Bureau of Mines attitude, that 5 years from now they hope they will have manganese ore recoverable from slag. That is what they are shooting for and that is the thing that is in back of this whole program. They are not interested in getting manganese out of the ground or anywhere else.

Mr. REGAN. We have Dr. Ralston here and a few minutes of time. I believe he might give you some information on this slag business,

82354-52-39

but before doing that, Mr. D'Ewart would like to insert in the record

Mr. D'EWART. No, I would like to make a request, Mr. Chairman, that as the policies are worked out with these five districts and for small-purchase contracts, that copies of these policies be made available to the committee members by the Defense Minerals Administration.

CONTENTION MADE THAT PROPOSED SLAG RECOVERY PROGRAM IS

UNWORKABLE

Mr. SAYLOR. Mr. Chairman, before Mr. Ralston makes his statement, I have a statement I would like to make with regard to this program and I think in light of that, maybe Mr. Ralston will explain some of the things that I am going to say to the committee.

The proposed manganese program as submitted to this committee by the Defense Mineral Administration for the record, in our hearings which we held back on the 10th and 11th of May, that document contains the following statement with respect to the manganese slag program:

There is no more important a manganese project than the slag program. The successful recovery of manganese from slags, for reuse, has been sought for 30 years or more in foreign countries and the United States; if successful, it should cut the need for imported ores by around one-half and end our precarious dependence on foreign manganese. The Bureau of Mines has carried its research and development of this program to a point where it now has a pilotscale blast furnace "on the stream" at its Pittsburgh testing station.

A further marker in the progress of the slag program is the expectation that a private entity will put a 100-ton-a-day pilot plant in operation, using its own funds, within 6 months from today. Certain steel companies are already segre gating their high-manganese slags for treatment in the commercial units which may be built within the next 3 years.

Because of the promise in the slag recovery work to date, the Bureau is counting, in its forecasts, on production equivalent to over 800,000 tons of ore, to be forthcoming by the end of 5 years from date; and the DMA is making its own plans accordingly in an effort to be ready to render whatever assistance is necessary to the installation of commercial plants, of about 1,000 tons per day capacity, within the next 3 years.

In other words, we are told that the Bureau of Mines and the Defense Minerals Administration is counting on obtaining about onehalf the United States requirements for manganese from open-hearth furnace slags 5 years from now.

An obvious conclusion is that the reliance of the Defense Minerals Administration on the recovery of such a large amount of manganese by a process which is still in the experimental stage, plus such amounts as may be anticipated from overseas sources of supply during a third world war, accounts for the limited scope of the remainder of the proposed manganese production program. Unfortunately, this program, except for special projects in the Artillery Peak, Ariz., Butte and Philipsburg, Mont., and Batesville, Ark., districts, is not designed or intended to be a program which would encourage or effectively obtain maximum production from thousands of manganese deposits, large and small, scattered throughout 27 or more States from Maine to California and from Montana to Texas.

Some members of the subcommittee have been receiving information concerning the Bureau of Mines experiments and the views of officials of some of the larger steel companies, as well as the private

views of a few of the Bureau's own metallurgists, in regard to the possibility of success of the slag program. None of this information, which has been obtained either first hand or from most reliable sources, is said to offer any encouragement for the ultimate success of the slag program.

The successful recovery of manganese from waste slags of the steel industry is to be highly desired from the standpoint of both the national security and the conservation of a highly critical material. However, for the Bureau of Mines and the Defense Minerals Administration to rely upon an unproved process in the experimental stage to provide half our manganese requirements 5 years from now would seem to be a mistake of considerable magnitude.

The following information has been brought to my attention. I would like to know how much of it is known by the witnesses to be essentially correct:

Mr. Percy Royster, a metallurgist with the United States Bureau of Mines, originated and patented the process for recovering manganese from slag which is being tried out at the Pittsburgh testing station of the Bureau of Mines.

Mr. Seth Richardson, a wealhy oil man from Houston, Tex., went to Mr. Stuart Symington some months ago and asked how he could be of help to the defense effort. Mr. Symington called his attention to the critical manganese situation and suggested he participate in

its solution.

Later, Mr. Richardson conferred with Mr. Royster, to whom he was referred by others, at which time Mr. Richardson learned of Mr. Royster's process for the recovery of manganese from furnace slag and presumably of the active experiments initiated on the same at the Bureau's Pittsburgh station in the fall of 1949.

Mr. Richardson subsequently conferred with Dr. James Boyd, Director of the Bureau of Mines and Administrator of the Defense Minerals Administration, and offered to finance further research on the process and the construction of a 100-ton-a-day pilot plant costing upward $1 or $2 million.

Apparently Mr. Richardson is the "private entity" referred to in the statement presented by DMA as follows:

A further marker in the progress of the slag program is the expectation that a private entity will put a 100-ton-a-day pilot plant in operation, using its own funds, within 6 months from today.

Mr. Richardson wrote to the United States Steel Co. and the Bethlehem Steel Co. asking if they would supply the slag required by the large pilot plant which he proposed to finance. The United States Steel Co. is know to have agreed to do so.

This probably accounts for the statement by DMA that—

Certain steel companies are already segregating their high-manganese slags for treatment in the commercial units which may be built within the next 3 years.

Mr. Richardson also negotiated for Mr. Royster's services. Mr. Royster agreed to terms whereby he would leave the Bureau of Mines and devote his full time on the proposed project after Mr. Richardson made certain commitments, including the purchase of a larger blower required for the blast furnace. It is said that the blower alone would cost approximately $40,000 and require 8 months to a year for delivery.

Part of the cost of the small (18-foot) $100,000 blast furnace being used to test the slag process was shared by the American Iron and Steel Institute.

On the initial test of the process in the pilot scale blast furnace, using waste furnace slag in the charge, the melt "froze" (chilled) and could not be poured. The furnace now is being torn down to remove the solidified mass.

Mr. Richardson, disillusioned by the performance, has returned to Texas without committing the money required to construct and experiment with a larger pilot plant.

In view of the above, the successful recovery of manganese from open-hearth furnace slag appears to be no more encouraging than it was more than 30 years ago when experiments for such recovery were first commenced.

In view of that I would like to have Mr. Ralston give his testimony. Mr. REGAN. Mr. Ralston, will you tell the committee your views of this?

SLAG RECOVERY RESEARCH HAS PROGRESSED AND IS SUCCESSFUL, ACCORDING TO DMA

Mr. RALSTON. I would make one correction-Mr. Sid Richardson. There is a Seth Richardson that you have confused.

Far from being such a disappointing project, the project has progressed greatly since your information. We should normally expect, with the new material put into a small blast furnace, to have a great deal of trouble and a freeze-up did occur, but no one that I know of was disappointed by it. It was expected.

Since that time the furnace has been put into operation and it has run very successfully. It has had one shut-down due to burning outburning a hole through the wall of the furnace above a tuyere which was repaired in 2 days and operation was resumed.

Starting with a slag containing 12 percent manganese at the time of the burn-out the affluent slag showed only 2 percent manganese. We had gotten 10 out of 12 into a phosphospiegel.

It was necessary to run an all-slag burden. There is a certain amount of open-hearth slag returned regularly when it is low enough in phosphorus to the blast furnaces but it is mixed with enough ore but we did not have assurance that we could smelt all slag.

We are now doing that. We are smelting all slag.

That was one of the minor points on which we needed assurance. The other point was the selective converter, acting on the spiegel that resulted from smelting in the blast furnace in which silicon and manganese burn off first and what we wanted to do was to stop at that point, leaving phosphorus and iron behind. That is the process. The selective converter has been operated on the minimum charges that we could work successfully. The minimum charge is about 600 pounds at a batch, and is finished in 20 minutes. Around the clock it amounts to quite a little, even in that small vessel.

The failure in Germany, England, and France, of which we have a great amount of information, had been the fact that in their selective blowing they had not stopped at the right point and we found how to cure that so that all of the manganese that could be burned from a spiegel would come out in a synthetic high-grade ore, or a

slag, if you want to call it that. The European people had had to make a slag with 40 to 45 percent manganese; still below the grade we call acceptable ore. The Bureau of Mines work showed that we could make a slag with 65 percent manganese, but it was difficult to pour it from the converter. When we cut it down to 55 it was manageable, and that is the type of selective oxidation product that we know we can work.

As soon as the blast furnace and a larger one-the larger one that you mentioned, and it may be 300 tons instead of 100 by the time we get it all figured out-is in operation, we shall resume the selective oxidation in a converter to prove up on a larger scale than we have at the present time.

We expect, then, a 55-percent manganese synthetic ore which can be diluted with subgrade ores to still be the equivalent of a 48-percent manganese charge.

One thing overlooked in Europe were the other credits than the manganese. Burdening the manganese were all of the costs on a waste product, now mined and delivered in a steel-making area, were about $200 per ton of finished ferromanganese, 80 percent grade. That was with no credits from anything else. There happens to be in open-hearth slag 3 tons of iron per ton of manganese, and a synthetic scrap iron of the type that we can make from the iron phosphorus residue by blowing out the phosphorus in a second converter is worth over $50 per ton; credit $150 and you have ferromanganese at $50 per ton.

Mr. SAYLOR. You are going to have first then your process of pouring off your manganese?

Mr. RALSTON. Pardon?

Mr. SAYLOR. You are going to tap your furnace first for your manganese and then put it into another furnace to get our iron ore or your slag iron ore scrap iron, which you say?

Mr. RALSTON. I think you have missed the point, Mr. Saylor. We smelt out a phosphospiegel that means an iron alloy, about 70 percent iron, a little over 20 percent manganese, 4 percent phosphorus, which would make it unusable if you left it there, and 3 percent silicon, and some carbon so that the total phosphospiegel is the thing which at present would not be salable if we tried to sell it with the manganese and the phosphorus together. The whole operation is to burn off the manganese into a slag, leave the phosphorus unburned in the iron, transfer that molten alloy of iron and phosphorus with half the carbon still in it to a second converter, on which the whole European steel industry operates. They burn out the phosphorus and get a valuable calcium phosphate slag, which is another credit to this operation, which we do not even need to appeal to.

It promises ferromanganese at a cost much less than the present selling price of ferromanganese. That makes it attractive to such investors as Mr. Sid Richardson.

Bethlehem had anticipated such a thing and has been stockpiling its current production of open-hearth slag for perhaps 2 years. I don't believe that United States Steel has been stockpiling it undiluted with any other plant rejects.

There is, of course, an accumulation of such slag usually badly mixed with the other things for many years back. In some plants it has been stockpiled separately, but the current production of such