Selected Articles from "The Mining Journal" 1944 ... - Vredenburgh

ADDISON N. CLARK· spotlights the .
12-State Western Mining ConFerence
KEYNOTE and dominant highlight of
the two-day San Francisco conference
was the resolution, passed unanimously,
demanding that a sound money.
hard money foundation be laid for any
worldwide structure for postwar economic
security. Lord Keynes' paper-currency
ideas had more holes shot in them at San
Francisco than they did at Bretton Woods
and in commentators' columns combined.
As a flavoring, the terse remarks by Governor
E. P. CarviUe of Nevada-naturally
urging a bimetallic hard-money standard
-highlighted the highlight.
' 4Sinee gold and silver," said Governor
Carville, "have been the standard in the
world for a period of 3,000 years, it is
pretty hard now to throw them out the
window and get some other base for the
monetary world. We of the West must
fight to retain gold and silver not only
as the monetary base of the United
States, but of the world."
The sound money resolution "plank"
took a full-arm swing at the whole Bretton
Woods party. One pithy phrase in it
was that Hprinting-press currency is not
desired by the average American, nor
does he want the currency of the United
States debased by any international group
of experts." And, added the resolution :
uExperiences of the world with greenbacks
after the Civil War, and with worthless
Gerinan marks after World War I, were
disastrous and caused a lack of confidence
in 'managed currency plans'."
Second in importance was the resolution
passed concerning the War Production
Board's directive which cited gold mining
as "non-essentia1." The resolution termed
this directive "unjust discrimination," and
demanded rescission of WLB Order L-208
which so completely and effectively
throttled big gold mines, little gold mines,
and even prospecting for gold.
Spicy hot-sauce was added to the gold
mining resolution with the terse assertion
that "bartenders are not called Inon-essen­
,tiai' (Le., by the WPB), but gold mining
is."
Right along this same line was the memorializing
of President Roosevelt to
"make free markets for gold in foreign
countries available to American gold producers.
and to permit export of newly
mined gold!' It was a timely suggestion
to the president to remember-when he's
in sessions with Messrs. Churchill and
Stalin and Premiers McKenzie King and
Jan Smuts of the gold-producing commonwealths,
et ai-that these westarn goldproducing
states ' have potential bi1lions of
dollal"s in gold yet underground to match
with those 22 billions down cellar in Kentucky.
Gold today is selling at from $40
to $80 an ounce in India, Egypt, Turkey,
Asia Minor (to Britain's benefit) while
our gold mining is stymied.
·Couulting Mining Engin •• r
Oakland. CaUlomla
THE- MINING JOURNAL· I"" AffGtIST 30, 1' •• :
Official delegates from 12 western
stales gathered in San Francisco
August 10 and 11 to discuss
the postwar problems 01 mining.
The situation was termed a perilous'
one from both industrial and
economic angles. as well as from
the employment-ol-Iabor angle.
OVERNOR EARL WARREN of Cali­
G fornia and Governor E. P. Carville of
Nevada called the conference, requesting
five-man delegations from a dozen states
-Arizona, Nevada, California, Oregon,
Washington, Idaho, Utah, Montana, Colorado,
New Mexico, Wyoming, 'and South
Dakota. Governor Warren, in his welcoming
talk, recalled the gold rush days
of 'forty-nine and the early 'fifties. He
then added that "great as was the gold
rush, the rush of war workers to this
western country in the last four years
will have as profound an effect on the
future of the state."
"I am one of those," he said, "who believe
this country has all the potentialities
of an empire, and in any other part of
the world it would be an empire. I can
see the day when there will be not 15,-
000,000 but 50,000,000 people living west
of the Rockies." As to postwar days, he
added: "We must have 1,500,000 new
jobs after the war is over if we are to
avoid one of the most calamitous unemployment
situations we ever have seen."
I am sure that the governor, as
chief executive of a great gold-mining
state, realizes that restoration of
gold mining will recreate many thousands
of potential and actual postwar
jobs.
ITAL need for freezing the nation's
V war-born stockpiles of strategic metals
-with the accent on copper-was stressed
by G. A. Ballam of Tucson, field engineer
of Arizona's Department of Mineral Resources.
Copper men of Arizona, said
Ballam, foresee a shutdown of her own
copper mines and those of other copper
states, Montana and Utah" if the refrigeration
is· not turned on promptly.
BaHam's statement of' the case was
pointed up sharply by S. H. Williston of
Portland, Oregon, who prepared the resolution
asking the western governors to
urge freezing of all government-owned
strategic metals stockpiles.
"Unless we get frozen stockpiles in the
next four months," said Williston, "we
are all broke!"
During the discussion, the Arizonans
told the conference that the single factor
of back-flow of scrap metals from overseas
battlefields threatens closure of Arizona's
mines for up to three years.
The situation was termed truly a perilous
one from the industrial and economic
angles, and just as perilous from the employment-of-labor
angle. Manifestly it
calls for fast action and continuous alertness.
It· affects not only our own mining
industry, but many interlocked ones.
It could play hob, for example, with
Arizona's great and growing citrus and
date industries, her cotton growing industry;
her now-humming cattle industry j and
Lord knowR what others. It can raise
just as much hob with the agriculture and
manufacturing industries of those other
11 western mining states named and represented.
Realization of that "interlocking" aspect
which ties the West's mining industry
inescapably to other industries was manifest
in all else brought up and discussed
at the San Francisco conference. As a
result the conference hit and hit hard on
related subjects.
Most important, of course, was that of
taxation. The Oregon delegation urged,
in a unanimously accepted resolution, that
drastic alteration in federal tax laws be
accomplished promptly, to "lift the ceiling
on initiative and release venture capital."
That resolution was not confined
merely to revision of taxation directly affecting
mining. It declared that free enterprise
is endangered by federal income
taxes, excess profits taxes, and capital
stock taxes, if they are continued after
the war at today's rates.
Another resolution, striking at late
rulings by the National Labor Relations
Board and of the wage and hour administrators
of the government, dell1ande-d
limitation of retroactive back pay in labor
disputes to six months. Such rulings as
were under criticism were bluntly charged
with imposing "undue hardships" on the
industry.
If the reverberations of that male
chorus, assembled from the key states of
a truly awakened West, do not echo and
re-echo through administrative and legislative
halls at Washington, then this writcr
is having hallucinations. These states,
col1ectively, are the source of such an
enormous majority of the nation's basic
minerals and nOllferrous metals that the
heads of Wall Street cartels, as well as
their political coworkers at Washington,
may well bend attentive ears to those
echoes. Incidentally, such senator::J and
representatives from any of t.hese 12 stntes
as may not yet be awake to what it's all
about would do well to bend their own
ears . . . likewise their energies.
The problems discussed are the one::;! on
which we hardrock miners must get hardboiled,
NOW, and for the. duration, and
for a long time after the peace comcs.
Remember those stockpiles and the huge
tonnage of salvaged scrap metals. They
should STAY IN STOCKPILES, protor.tion
against a war yet to come, and not
to be dumped on the market to ruin the
nation's vital mining industry.
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