ogether out of proportion to their volume. For instance, only
fourteen pounds of manganese are necessary in the making of a ton of
steel, yet a ton of steel cannot be made without manganese. The
increasing specialization in iron and steel products, and the rapidly
widening knowledge of the qualities of the different alloys, are
constantly shifting the demand from one to the other of the ferro-alloy
minerals. Each one of the ferro-alloy minerals may be regarded as being
in the nature of a key mineral for the iron and steel industry, and the
control of deposits of these minerals is a matter of international
concern. Control is not a difficult matter, in view of the fact that the
principal supplies of practically every one of the alloy minerals are
concentrated in comparatively few spots on the globe,--as indicated on
succeeding pages.

Nature has not endowed the United States, nor in fact the North American
continent, with adequate high-grade supplies of the principal
ferro-alloy minerals,--with the exception of molybdenum, and with the
exception of silica, magnesite, and fluorspar, which are used as
accessories in the process of steel making. With plenty of iron ore and
coal, and with an iron and steel capacity amounting to over 50 per cent
of the world's total, the United States is very largely dependent on
other countries for its supplies of the ferro-alloy minerals. The war
brought this fact home. With the closing of foreign sources of supplies,
it looked at one time as if our steel industry was to be very greatly
hampered; and extraordinary efforts were made to keep channels of
importation open until something could be done in the way of
development, even at excessive cost, of domestic supplies. The result of
war efforts was a very large development of domestic supplies of
practically all the ferro-alloy minerals; but in no case, with the
exceptions noted above, did these prove sufficient to meet the total
requirements. This development was at great cost and at some sacrifice
to metallurgical efficiency, due to the low and variable grades of the
raw materials. With the post-war reopening of importation much of the
domestic production has necessarily ceased, and large amounts of money
patriotically spent in the effort to meet the domestic requirements have
been lost. These circumstances have resulted in the demand in Congress
from producers for direct financial relief and in demand for protective
tariffs, in order to