World Minerals ? War and Postwar ? Wartime Problems Met by the Government ? Private Industry Will Have Changed Conditions to Meet

POSSIBLE postwar trends of the more important world minerals will be determined in part by their present world position and by the acts and forces that have operated during the war period, so it is desirable first to review briefly what has been happening in the foreign field of metals and minerals. When we first entered this war we of the mineral profession were all acutely conscious of our lack of strategic minerals and other materials, which had to be imported in great quantities-minerals such as manganese, chrome, tin, mercury, nickel, and antimony. But we realized also that we had to acquire vast quantities of those minerals of which we had thought we were bountifully supplied. Our assumed domestic abundances turned out to be woefully deficient, and demands also arose for new minerals never before produced in large quantities. Some threescore minerals entered the strategic list of our imports. Ores from new sources had to be sought, developed, and transported. Tonnages in the millions of such bulk materials as zinc, lead, copper, chrome, and manganese flowed to feed our war efforts. Sparsely distributed minerals such as tin, mercury, antimony, tungsten, cobalt, mica, and corundum had to be lured from their rock lairs in greatly increased quantities to feed the hungry maw of war industry, and the rare minerals such as tantalite, columbite, beryl, and quartz crystals had to be developed and procured in quantities never before dreamed of. New uses such as radio and radar created demands for many minerals formerly thought of only as adornments of museum collections and not as pressing industrial minerals. Such minerals were never before mined in quantity.