Political and commercial geology and the world's mineral resources

by Unknown

POSITION OF THE LEADING COMMERCIAL NATIONS

United States.

—Though the United States has insignificant deposits of nickel ore and therefore exerts little or no political control over nickel mining, American capital plays an important if not the leading rôle in the industry. Of the four companies holding the deposits of the Sudbury district two are American, and these two possess what are doubtless the largest reserves there. One of these, the International Nickel Co., has the next to the largest holdings in New Caledonia.

Great Britain.

—Of all nations Great Britain is in the strongest position politically with respect to the nickel industry, because of the Sudbury district being in Canada. It has used this control in an endeavor to localize the business of refining Ontario nickel ores in Canada, with the result that the International Nickel Co. is to transfer its refining operations from New Jersey to its new refinery in Ontario.

Commercially, British capital controls the two other companies having holdings at Sudbury. In one of these,—the British-America Nickel Corporation,—the government itself has a controlling interest.

The policy of the British government with relation to the Sudbury nickel ores, which give the British an overwhelmingly dominant political control over the world’s nickel, is highly significant as showing that the government is aware of the necessity for commercial as well as political control, in order to reap all the commercial and strategic advantages of its good fortune. During the war, and before the United States entered, great feeling was roused in Canada and England by the German submarine, Deutschland, loading at New York a cargo that consisted partly of metallic nickel, it being assumed that this was originally Canadian nickel. The direct participation of the British government in the Sudbury industry in such a way as to make the government practically the dominant factor, and the transfer of the refinery operations of the American-owned International Nickel Co. from New Jersey to Ontario, mark a vigorous and aggressive nationalistic policy which has attained its object without much delay.

France.

—France owns the island of New Caledonia and has political control of the nickel deposits there. Two of the three principal companies holding New Caledonian ore deposits are presumably held by French interests. The larger one, La Société le Nickel, was for a long time controlled by the Rothschilds of France. It was reported later to have gotten into German hands.

Germany.

—Germany exercises political control over no important nickel deposits. Before the war the German firm of Krupp had obtained some New Caledonian nickel properties. A German group, the Metallgesellschaft, is reported to have had control of La Société le Nickel at the outbreak of the war, and also the mines and smelters of Norway.

CHAPTER VII
TUNGSTEN
By Frank L. Hess

USES OF TUNGSTEN[74]

[74] Unless otherwise noted, the short ton of 2,000 pounds is used throughout this chapter and “tungsten ore” means materials carrying 60 per cent. WO₃.

The essential uses of tungsten are as an alloy in high-speed tool steel, for the making of filaments for incandescent lamps, for targets and cathodes of Roentgen (“X”) ray tubes, and for electric contacts for explosion engines or wherever an intermittent electric contact is needed. Other uses are in saw and some other steels, as a constituent of stellite, in a tungsten-iron alloy for valves in automobile and airplane engines, for kenotrons and similar instruments, in a manganese-chromium-tungsten-iron alloy for wire-drawing dies, in wire cloth, luminescent screens for Roentgen (“X”) rays, mordants and minor chemicals.

Substitutes.

—The use of tungsten in high-speed steels is as standard as the use of yeast in bread, and, though assiduously sought, no substitute is known that satisfactorily takes its place. According to report, in England and France molybdenum has been used to replace about half of the tungsten in some high-speed tool steels, but this is seemingly not a preferred method, being used only when the obtaining of tungsten is difficult. In the United States the practice has had few sponsors. The following quotation from the Mining Journal (London) for May 25, 1918, p. 318, shows that this sentiment is not unknown abroad:

The manufacture of ferromolybdenum is stated to have been commenced in Sweden, where the lack of ferrotungsten has forced the employment of this substitute.

During 1917, 104 (metric?) tons of molybdenite was shipped from Norway to Germany, where it probably was used as in Sweden. Henry E. Wood reported finding molybdenum in the steel of a German helmet. When tungsten was at the excessively high price of early 1916, many experiments were made to find a substitute, but apparently without full success, although lately several substitute steels containing cobalt and chromium and especially intended for cast milling-cutters and other multiple-edged tools have been placed on the market and a cobalt-chromium-molybdenum steel and a uranium steel have been offered for lathe tools. Stellite, the cobalt-chromium-tungsten alloy, in which there is only one-third to one-half as much tungsten as is used in high-speed steel, has grown in favor, and cooperite, a nickel-zirconium alloy, is also a competitor, but the trade in the combined list has made no appreciable impression on the demand for tungsten steels.

A change in the manner of using tungsten steel, by which a thin plate of high-speed steel is cemented to a more ordinary steel bar so as to form the cutting edge of a lathe tool, has made the demand for tungsten less than it would have been had the old practice been followed of making the whole tool of high-speed steel.