To avoid trouble the German Thorium Convention arranged later that half of its supply should be furnished by Mr. Gordon and half by the de Freitas company. A new convention was formed by the four German chemical manufacturers with Mr. Gordon and the de Freitas company, preventing firms in other countries that had started to manufacture thorium nitrate from getting raw material. Consequently great efforts were made to find and develop new deposits of monazite. The high price for thorium nitrate made possible the mining of monazite in the Carolinas and its export to Germany, especially to one German manufacturer who was not in the German Thorium Convention.
Ultimately there was an overproduction of thorium and in 1906 the price dropped 50 per cent. Monazite mining declined in all localities where the cost of mining was high, and production in the Carolinas and the interior of Brazil practically stopped.
During the four or five years antedating the war the German Incandescent Gas Light Co., of Berlin, succeeded in controlling the largest manufacturers of thorium nitrate in Europe, except those in France. It controlled both the English and Australian companies and became the active competitor of the so-called Thorium Convention, which at that time had lost much of its power. Mr. Gordon still has extensive interests in Brazil, but he does not have a monoply. The exportation rights from Brazil are in the hands of Luis de Rezende & Co. (Rio de Janiero), Mr. Gordon, and others. Luis de Rezende & Co. is mainly a French concern, but has Brazilian and Portuguese stockholders. The company controls the French company, Société Minière, associated with the Welsbach Co.
As noted above, one French company has exploited monazite deposits in the territory immediately behind the government lands in the State of Rio de Janeiro. Another French company has worked the black sands along the Parahyba River, near Sapucaica, which contain traces of monazite.
India.
—Before the war, the German manufacturers of thorium nitrate exercised as close control over the monazite deposits of Travancore, India, as over those of Brazil. Only a limited quantity of the sand was sold to gas-mantle manufacturers and other consumers in the United Kingdom, and then at a price nine times the price paid by the German consumers. Such a monoply of the supplies of raw material made the German monoply of the thorium nitrate industry almost complete.
According to S. J. Johnstone, in an address at the annual meeting of the Society of Chemical Industry in July, 1916, the Germans obtained practical control of the Travancore monazite deposits in the following manner: A lease for working these deposits was granted some years ago by the Travancore Durbar, with the approval of the Government of India, to the London Cosmopolitan Tin Mining Co., which contracted to sell the whole of its output to a German firm. Soon after the outbreak of war it was found that the whole of the preference shares and 11,000 of the ordinary shares of the Travancore Minerals Co. were held in trust for the Auer company, of Berlin.
The India Office decided that in the future all directors of the company working the concession must be British-born and that the company, must be ready at all times to sell monazite sand direct, and at a fair price, to British firms. German contracts were canceled. A second company, Thorium, Ltd., obtained a 20-year lease to work 150 acres in Travancore for monazite sand, and is exporting the sand and manufacturing thorium nitrate from it at works in England. A great deal of Travancore monazite has been imported by American companies.
POSITION OF THE UNITED STATES
As outlined above, it can be readily seen that the United States is dependent upon Brazil and India for its raw materials, as domestic deposits are not large enough to furnish the required supply and cannot be worked in competition with the more cheaply mined foreign deposits.