Evening Star Newspaper, December 2, 1936, Page 8

ALUMINUM FILL COPPER WAR ROLE Nations Develop Substitutes as Part of “Self-Suffi- ciency” Programs. The nations race to re-arm omn the industrial front, as Germany and Italy, among the “have-not” powers, push their “self-suficiency” programs, spurred an by the Fas- eist-Communist cleavage over the civil war in Spain What the na- tions are doing to develop synthetic raw materials needed in war is discussed here in the fourth of @ ,series of articles by a well-known writer was was formerly a civilian ehemist in the U. S. Army Chemi- * eal Warfare Service and who had access to confidential documents in his research. BY WILLIAM GILMAN. Another war would bring high prices for most raw materials, but one Army mecessity which has not. waited for that boom is copper. It has been col- lecting in advance or the customary war-time panic to get munitions at any price. As various copper-hungry nations began laying up stocks of red metal & couple of years ago, copper began | rising in price. It started at 7% ¢ents a pound. Today it hovers around 10%%. Because of the buying spree, enough copper has been stored abroad for Army use to give American copper | share owners a touch of new pros- perity and various war ministries & new feeling of security. This is because, in our electrical age, eopper carries the modern' army's| nerve impulses—just as steel builds the war machines, oil makes those machines.run and explosive nitrates furnish the power with which they blast the enemy. Copper is needed for telegraph instruments, radio coils, transmission lines. It carries the mod- ern general's voice to his men. Powers Build Reserves. Only the United States, Great Brit- | #ain and Japan can find enough of the metal within thelr boundaries. That | s why the other powers have been | stacking up their reserves. The policy of a copper-hungary na- | tion. like Germany, is to lay aside cop- per imports for the army and let the | public shift for itself with substitutes. | Moreover, for financial and stategic | reasons, such nations seek substitutes wWhich will make the army, too, self- | sufficient. Here is where aluminum enters the picture.. Aluminum is far more abundant than copper and can carry electricity almost as well. Moreover, its alloys are versatile. They can take copper’s | place in the manufacture of shell and | bullet jackets. They can replace such | alloys of copper as bronze and brass, | and their streamlined strength makes ' them a worthy substitute for steel itself. Proof of this can be seen in the | new streamlined trains and in trans- port airplanes built with duralumin, an alloy. Of the seven big powers, France,: Russia and Italy, though lacking in| copper, have plenty of bauxite, the ore from which aluminum is smelted. ‘The path for these nations is easy. Germany’s Task Harder. Germany’s task is harder. She has no high-grade bauxite. Moreover, last year France forbade bauxite exports to Germany. As a result, Germany is finding her ore in the Dutch East Indies and converting it into huge| stocks of aluminum. Nor will she be defeated if war comes and closes the seaways to her. German chemists have so refined the process for pro- ducing aluminum that they can use even clay as the initial ore. This gives an indication of the ex- tent of aluminum, which comprises 7 per cent of the earth’s crust and is more abundant than all other metals combined. Production of aluminum from bauxite is expersive, and from clay much more so. But Germany has shown no fear of expense in her race for self-sufficiency. By last year Germany had stepped up her aluminum production to 70,000 tons, taking the world lead— manufacturing more than twice as much as America and almost half of the entire world output. According to some estimates. Germany hopes to more than double her output next year, planning to produce 150,000 tons. Another nation with few known cop- per deposits 1s Russia. Five years ago her aluminum production was nil. To- | day aluminum plants are rising near | all the hydro-electric centers, and Rus- sia plans to gross 80,000 tons of the silvery metal next year. Even Japan, which has almost enough copper, wants to conserve it. She has just built 10 aluminum smelting plants, and she imports bauxite. Process Developed in U. 8. * Each of these powers has already surpassed, or hopes soon to surpass the American aluminum output, al- though the smelting process was de- veloped in this country. Germany, in particular, remembers how she starved for copper in the World War. After the stored supply was exhausted and neighboring re- serves raided, the Reich turned to reclamation. Church bells, bronze statues, doorknobs—all these went | into the melting pot. Finally copper | reached sush a premium that Ger- many turned to substitutes. She could not import bauxite through the block- ade, so had no aluminum. Mining people say that a higher- priced metal can usually take the place of a cheaper one. Thus, with iron practically useless as a carrier of elec- tricity, Germany turned to expensive zinc, which has less than a third the conductivity of copper. The fact that such a strategic sub- stitute as aluminum exists goes back, not to the customary German scien- tist, but to an American chemist, Charles M. Hall, who uncovered his | rich secret 50 years ago. It was a year | when aluminum sold at $16 an ounce. | In that vear only 23 pounds of the metal were produced in the United States. In the same year builders of the Washington Monument could think of nothing more spectacular with which fo gild the top than this silvery, precious metal. | Hall Developed Method. | Hall had heard his chemistry pro- | fessor at Oberlin College say that mil- STENOTYPY, The Machine-Way in Shorthand 150 to 250 Words Per Minute Call. phone or write for full information THE STENOTYPE COMPANY | 604 Albee Blds. Phone NAtional 8320 | Gifts for You - _Berlits TEXTBOOKS FREE if you enroll before Dec. 31st. ~You can learn to speak any Ianguage “like a native” by quick and sure Berlitz Method. Start lessons row r_in 1937 _BUT ENROLL NOW TO RECEIVE GIFT BOOKS FREE. CLASSES START Wednesday, December 2 FRENCH . SPANISH GERMAN ITALIAN Famous Conversational Berlitzs Method THE BERLITZ SCHOOL OF LANGUAGES | 1115 Conn. A NAtional 0270 Eversmart: Wrops around the enkle in a slim, trim manner single back-snap. pers. weather protection. medium heels. end brown High Jaunty: Two strep Gaytes with Net lined up- A brand new kind of wet and in new ankle height of rubber with the seft, warm pretection of fur. High and medium heels. - $2.50 THE EVENING STAR, WASHINGTON, D. C, WEDNESDAY, DECEMBER 2, 1936. lions of dollars awaited the man who could extract aluminum cheaply. This Hall did. His method made him wealthy and Andrew Mellon, who built the Aluminum Co. of America, even wealthier. There is plenty of bauxite in Arkan- sas, Georgia, Mississippl, Alabama and Tennessee. In 13 years American production went up from 23 pounds to 1,000,000 pounds. By 1929 it ex- ceeded 240,000,000 pounds. The price of $16 an ounce had come down to a little more than 20 cents a pound, and there it has stayed— s0 complete is the Mellon monopoly. It controls mqst of this ocountry's bauxite mines, owns all of the alumi- num smelting plants and most of the factories which manufacture . alumi- num products. To escape American labor costs, the Aluminum Co. of America has given an international aspect to its produc- tion in recent years. It has begun mining bauxite down in Dutch Guiana, where it owns a tract ap- proximately 100 miles long. The ore, or a refined version of it, is shipped to tributary smelting plants in Canada and Norway, where both waterpower and labor are cheap. American aluminum interests pro- duced 54,000 tons of metal in. the United States last year and 37,000 tons in Canada and Norway. There is little doubt that the home produc- tion could be stepped up and accom- modate the American Army, Navy and Air Corps and private industry, and still leave plenty over for export purposes. , Tennessee Valley Prospects. All this points to a possible day when the Tennessee Valley, where Mellon interests already own a series of power dams and two large smelt- ing plants, may become in the light- metal world what Germany's Ruhr is to the heavy-metal industry. | With ample supplies of copper in this country, aluminum receives no| such subsidization as it gets abroad. Nevertheless, it is growing more use- ful each year. A nfetal denoting speed, strength and beauty, it is in- vading a variety of flelds and only stainless steel seems to have any chance of stopping it. German chemists already have pro- duced saluminum from clay., Their next step may be to do so cheaply, but, expensive or not, the aluminum is ready and there is nowhere among the great powers sny terror over the uneven distribution of copper. (Copyright. 1936, by the North American Newspaper Alliance, Inc.) RICHMAN TO ATTEMPT COASTAL SPEED MARK December 11 Date Set for Effort to Break Record Made by Hughes. BY the Assoclated Press. MIAMI, Fla, December 2.—Harry Richman, trans-Atlantic fiyer, said yesterday he would take off from Floyd Bennett fleld December 11 in his monoplane Lady Peace in an at- tempt to break the New York-to- Miami speed record established last year by Howard Hughes Hughes, young motion picture di- rector, flew the approximately 1,200 miles in 4 hours and 50 minutes. Richman, who will be accompanied on the flight by his mechanic, Abner Powell, said he himself would pilot the plane. 2 RESORTS. ATLANTIC CITY, _N l. ATLANTIC CITY December, ever delightful, is doubly s0 during the Christm Year holidays. Write for Special Family Rates. WALTER J. BUZBY. INC. 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Fred C. Crawford of Clevéland, Ohio, was chosen vice president and H. J. Rand, 3d, of New York City was elected secretary. Casey Jones of Newark, N. J,, was chosen as a new governor, the only change in governors. Col. Edgar 8. Gorrell, president of the Air Transport Association of America, predicted sirlines in the United States would carry approxi- mately 1,000,000 passengers in 1936, & 23 per cent increase over last year. He said the lines had 460 planes in regular service and employed 9,000 persons. Hedges Dim Glare. Hedges are being planted on roads in Engiand to dim the glare of automo- bile lights. A hedge planted in the middle of the highway between Bir- mingham and Coventry has been a Buccess and now a mile of the London- Carlisle road is to be divided by & hedge. 00F LEAK NA. 4370 GICHNER : Arthur Jordan’s Christmas Club Immediate Delivery The Easy Way The Grand is the per- fect instrument for the living room, giv- ing both tone and beauty of case design in a small space. 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