basis, to determine certain facts that I presume that the Supply Division wished to resolve. We thought there were some objectionable features to start out on a small test basis. We thought that it would not be acceptable to the miners if they had to mine a test run for 3 months, or to start a plant, for instance, like Mr. Cole's plant, which required a substantial outlay of fifty or sixty thousand dollars to begin. All of the miners agreed. Our thoughts then went to a system which would give some assurance that the whole industry would operate for a period of years, and to try to get away from the test run and the test mining basis. With the exception of Mr. Knapp, however, his mill was established, to be sure, but it made a product which did not meet the specifications, i. e., the stockpile specifications. They could only be met by processing the ore at Butte. It was recognized that his plant. might very well fit in a program in an intermediate stage, and that we could determine what could be done with his concentrate after he had mined and milled this initial run, and at that time we envisaged a renegotiation. Is that true? Mr. KNAPP. That was provided in a vague sort of way, in our draft contract, but no similar provision, no corresponding provision, has been written into any of the other contracts, all of which are based on the premise of shipping all of their future ore to the domestic plant in Butte. Therefore, it would be ineffective to have such a provision in our contract. We would have no ore to treat, in other words. Mr. MITTENDORF. But as a result of our little reopening here last Tuesday or Wednesday we now have agreed that the Government will take possession of the ore at Philipsburg? Mr. KNAPP. Yes. Mr. MITTENDORF. That erases that objection. Mr. D'EWART. You and Mr. Knapp feel you will get together on this Phillipsburg-Butte area? Mr. MITTENDORF. It is certainly my earnest desire. Mr. KNAPP. I will do my best. Mr. D'EWART. Will you agree? Do you think you can do that this afternoon before you leave town? Mr. KNAPP. I will be very happy to do my best. Mr. D'EWART. I beg your pardon? Mr. KNAPP. I will be very happy to try. Mr. D'EWART. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Mr. REGAN. Thank you, Mr. Knapp. Glad to have you with us. STATUS OF CONTRACT FOR MANGANESE MILL AT EL PASO, TEXAS Now, we always have to keep El Paso to the last. I am getting too polite, but is there anything new that has developed, Mr. Mittendorf, that shows we might be getting some action there in this El Paso matter? Mr. MITTENDORF. Yes. Mr. REGAN. Where are we now with that? I understand the proponents of this mill in El Paso have expressed a willingness heretofore to pay the expense of a man to go down and inspect this area for you if you are not yet satisfied of the potential quantity there. I understand that the price set on that is quite a little less than the Deming ore, and the quality is somewhat better and it looks to me like that is one of the best places to get a start on this manganese of all of the five areas. I just wondered where we are today with that program. In the last week you said something about the contract being prepared by the proponents' attorneys in Denver, and it didn't arrive here until the fifth of June. I realize the mail might be slow. It didn't arrive in town until the latter part of May. It finally got to the GSA on the 5th of June and I understand from a brief talk with the GSA members present that they have pretty well agreed to the terms of that contract; is that correct? Mr. GUMBEL. That is correct. Mr. REGAN. That being the case in the stockpiling of ore, what more is there to be done to get that underway! Mr. MITTENDORF. A matter of writing it up; isn't it, gentlemen? Mr. ELLIOTT. As far as the purchase of ore is concerned, that is correct, and getting a certification from DPA and getting the money. Mr. REGAN. I wasn't quite clear, to do what? Mr. ELLIOTT. We have to get the certification from DPA and get the money from the Budget Bureau and we have to write up a letter of intent with Mr. Roth. Mr. REGAN. And DPA is here in the person of Dr. Morgan. Will that be a long drawn-out affair, Dr. Morgan? Dr. MORGAN. No, sir. That is part of the general program that we have already approved and we will be only too glad to see them going ahead. Mr. REGAN. What else is to be done, Mr. Mittendorf? Mr. MITTENDORF. It is pretty much out of my hands now. Mr. REGAN. It is? Mr. MITTENDORF. Yes. Mr. REGAN. That is as far as the stockpiling of the ores is concerned? Mr. MITTENDORF. Yes. Mr. REGAN. Then what is your idea of the authorizing of the plan? How long a time is it going to take to satisfy you that that plant will be authorized, the mill, at El Paso? Mr. MITTENDORF. Well, Mr. Chairman, it will not be me alone. It is the Administration. Mr. REGAN. I have heard from the Administrator. He said 30 days over 30 days ago. What is your idea? That is, in order for you to clear it, what are you going to require? Mr. MITTENDORF. I will require I think the Administration will require reasonable assurance that there is a flow of ore sufficient to Mr. REGAN. The flow is already sufficient. What steps are you going to take to satisfy yourself on that? Do you still plan to have a man go down and actually inspect the properties? Mr. MITTENDORF. Yes. Mr. REGAN. And you still feel that that is going to be necessary to have that matter cleared through the State Department? Mr. MITTENDORF. Yes. That will be necessary. Mr. REGAN. And has the State Department been appraised of that request? Mr. MITTENDORF. They have. Mr. REGAN. But they have not yet worked out any arrangement with Mexico to satisfy the diplomatic end of the procedure? Mr. MITTENDORF. I inquired Friday about that. Mr. REGAN. Sir? Mr. MITTENDORF. I inquired about that Friday and asked how long it would take, and the guess was about a week, they said; about a week more. Mr. REGAN. A week from last Friday? Mr. MITTENDORF. From last Friday. Mr. REGAN. Will you have a man available to go down promptly thereafter? Mr. MITTENDORF. That is a function of the survey, and they said yes of the USGS. Mr. REGAN. So with this clearance from GSA, to DPA, in 24 hours, what will be the procedure? Will you have a man on the ground down there to buy the ore? Mr. GUMBEL. We will have to send somebody out there to look over the ground. Mr. REGAN. The place where it is to be stockpiled, and so forth, how long will that take? Mr. GUMBEL. We will notify our regional office and ask them to do whatever is necessary. Mr. MAULL. That will be placed on the regional office. We will set up the money so the man the minute he delivers the material, it is weighed and he can be paid. That will be approximately 5 days. Mr. REGAN. You have agreed on the price schedule of the ore, the price to be paid. It has been set out. Mr. GUMBEL. That is right. Mr. REGAN. It is reasonable to believe that before the end of June shipments should be rolling? Mr. GUMBEL. I think they have to build a spur track. I don't know how long that is going to take. Do you know? Mr. MITTENDORF. No. Mr. REGAN. I understood tentative arrangements had been made for that. Mr. GUMBEL. That is right. Mr. REGAN. But it has not actually been put into operation? Mr. REGAN. Is there any other hold-up that anybody can visualize to delay further the starting operations on that? Mr. MITTENDORF. That is the purchase of the ore, Mr. Chairman! Mr. REGAN. Yes. Mr. MITTENDORF. No. I wondered as Mr. Gumble spoke, there might be some delay on the other end. One party has leased 60 acres and that has to be transferred to GSA. Mr. ELLIOTT. We will keep ahead of the contractor on that. We will find a place to store it. Mr. REGAN. There is nothing in the way to start immediately, the clearance with GSA, with the authority, the man will be on hand with his pocketbook. Within a week from last Friday the State Department will give you green light. They have a man going to Mexico to say that the ore is there, and that, with the statement made last 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. 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. There is evidence in every one of those measures to that effect. We 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 mangsnese 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, Art, Butte and Philipsburg, Mont., and Batesville, Ark., districts, is not designed or intended to be a program which would encourage or effec tively 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 informa tion concerning the Bureau of Mines experiments and the views of officials of some of the larger steel companies, as well as the private |