One of the developments in the Bureau of Mines which in my opinion might properly be taken up is the cheap production of chemicals for weed eradication. Have you investigated that subject to any degree? Mr. DEAN. Yes. We have gone into the question of sodium chlorate manufacture. The Department of Agriculture established several years ago an experimental plant for the production of sodium chlorate at Arlington, and we have visited that place and discussed the subject with their experts and have done a considerable amount of work in locating and developing methods for the beneficiation of raw materials, such as salt, which might be of the necessary purity for the manufacture of sodium chlorate electrolytically at one of these power sources in the West. Mr. SCRUGHAM. Is that one of the chief materials used in the eradication of weeds. Dr. DEAN. Sodium chlorate is, I believe, the principal weed eradicator. STRATEGIC METALS OF WHICH THERE WILL BE A PROBABLE SHORTAGE (See p. 480) Mr. O'NEAL. Going back to the question of strategic metals, I would like to know what are the minerals on which there would probably be a shortage in this country, that would require importations. Mr. SCRUGHAM. We have an expert present for that. Mr. O'NEAL. I thought possibly you had gotten away from that subject. Mr. SCRUGHAM. We will put it in the record at this time. Mr. SCRUGHAM. Mr. Hess, will you make a statement for the benefit of the record in answer to Mr. O'Neal's question? Mr. Hess. We are short of antimony, cobalt, chromium, iridium, manganese, mercury, mica - and I bring in mica because it is a war material nickel, tin, and tungsten. Mr. O'NEAL. How about fluorspar? Mr. Hess. We have a lot of undeveloped fluorspar in the West which cannot be used now because it is too far from transportation, but I understand indirectly from the War Department that they are interest in foreign sources of fluorspar, because they have had trouble in finding enough in this country. Mr. SCRUGHAM. Does that answer your question, Mr. O'Neal? Mr. SCRUGHAM. You will be called on later, Mr. Hess, unless there are some other questions. DEVELOPMENT OF CERAMIC RAW MATERIALS Dr. Dean, have you given any consideration to the development of ceramic raw materials? We import into this country, from information I have received from the officials of the Tennessee Valley Authority who are making such imports, some 6,000,000 dozens of pieces of ceramic each year, and in the case of international difficulties that would appear to be quite impossible. Have you done any work or given any thought to the development of such raw materials? Dr. DEAN. Yes. We have made some investigations of the possible utilization of mineral raw materials locally available for ceramic ware in connection with electric firing at our Boulder City laboratory. I believe that you have seen the results of some of this work, which indicates that a very satisfactory type of ceramic ware can be made from western raw materials with the controlled firing which is available through cheap power. Mr. SCRUGHAM. I wish to insert in the record at this time the statement of fact that the Tennessee Valley Authority has a laboratory for this purpose located at Norris, Tenn. Does any other department of the Government have a laboratory of this character? Dr. DEAN. Well, the development of ceramic work, you know, was allocated to the Bureau of Standards. Mr. SCRUGHAM. Who allocated it to the Bureau of Standards? Dr. DEAN. I presume Congress did, following the transfer of the Bureau of Mines to the Department of Commerce, but I am not certain of that. Mr. SCRUGHAM. Dr. Furness, could you tell us that? Dr. FURNESs. It was done by Executive order. Mr. SCRUGHAM. Who made the Executive order? Dr. FINCH. It was by order of the President. Dr. FURNESS. Mr. Hoover was then Secretary of Commerce, and the transfer of the Bureau of Mines from the Department of the Interior to the Department of Commerce was made by an Executive order of President Coolidge. Mr. SCRUGHAM. Will you endeavor to furnish the committee with a copy of that Executive order, for that comes within the subject of overlapping functions. This appears to me to be a function of the Bureau of Mines, which is also being handled by the Bureau of Standards and by the Tennessee Valley Authority. (The following statement was later supplied:) CERAMIC WORK The transfer of ceramic work from the Bureau of Mines to the Bureau of Standards was not by direct Executive order, but did result from the order of President Coolidge, on June 4, 1925, transferring the Bureau of Mines from the Department of the Interior to the Department of Commerce. On November 6, 1925, Acting Director D. A. Lyon, of the Bureau of Mines, reported to Assistant Secretary J. Walter Drake, of the Department of Commerce, pon the ceramic investigations of the Bureau of Mines, listing 15 activities. On Ibruary 2, 1926, Assistant Secretary Drake sent the following memorandum to D.vetor Turner, of the Bureau of Mines: "Carrying out the plan announced by Secretary Hoover some time ago, all rese strti and experimental work in ceramics, refractories, etc., including laboratory and plant tests, and related cooperative activities heretofore conducted by the Barea of Mines, are to be transferred to the Bureau of Standards and will be under the direction of Mr. P. H. Bates, Chief of the Ceramics Division. It is the understanding that from this date these activities will be coordinated looking toward the consumation of this arrangement." T. plan announced by Secretary Hoover, mentioned in this memorandum, was et ressed in a letter of August 24, 1925, to the Acting Director of the Bureau of Mes, in which he discussed the Budget estimates of the Bureau and made the 1. ng comment: "It is my intention during the present year to make other provision for the work de by the Bureau of Mines in Alaska and for the investigations now carried on in the field of ceramics." On February 13, 1926, Assistant Secretary Drake sent the following memorandum to the Director of the Bureau of Mines: "It is expected that Congress will approve the Department's recommendation for the transfer of the ceramics research and experimental work of the Bureau of Mines to the Bureau of Standards, effective beginning the next fiscal year. "In the meantime and until that date, in order to coordinate the activities of the two Bureaus in ceramics, the direction thereof will be under the general charge of the Secretary's office, which has delegated Mr. P. H. Bates, Chief of the Ceramics Division of the Bureau of Standards, to act for the purpose; and the personnel, records, and equipment of the station at Columbus will remain, as heretofore, under the Bureau of Mines. You will, therefore, until further notice, receive your instructions from Mr. Bates, acting for the Secretary." on In the 1927 bearings before the subcommittee of the House Committee Appropriations, on page 2, the Acting Secretary of Commerce advised the transfer of the ceramics research to the Bureau of Standards; also, on page 77, Dr. Burgess, Director of the Bureau of Standards, explained the item of $47,000 requested by the Bureau of Standards for the conduct of ceramic work. On pages 187, 188, and 189, Mr. J. A. Davis, of the Information Division, Bureau of Mines, and Mr. Dorsey Lyon, Acting Director, explained the reduction in the requested appropriation to the Bureau of Mines caused by the transfer of ceramic work to the Bureau of Standards and also commented upon the kind of investigations the Bureau had been conducting. By the appropriation act, Congress approved the transfer. The Executive order transferring the Bureau of Mines to the Department of Commerce was as follows: EXECUTIVE ORDER NO. 4239 I Calvin Coolidge, President of the United States of America, under the authority conferred upon me by the act of February 14, 1903, entitled "An Act to establish the Department of Commerce and Labor" (32 Stat. 826), and by virtue of all other powers thereto me enabling, do hereby transfer from the Department of the Interior to the Department of Commerce, to be administered under the supervision of the Secretary of Commerce, the Bureau of Mines and the employees thereof, save and except those employees engaged on oil-leasing work and mineralleasing work, who, with their equipment, shall remain in the Interior Department. together with all appropriations pertaining to the said Bureau of Mines, save and except the appropriations with which the oil and mineral-leasing work respectively, are paid for and conducted; the records, save and except those pertaining to leasing work above mentioned, and all public property of said service in the District of Columbia or elsewhere, as provided in the act of February 14, 1903, supra. Further, under the authority recited herein, I do hereby transfer from the Department of the Interior to the Department of Commerce, to be administered under the supervision of the Secretary of Commerce, the Division of Mineral Resources in the Geological Survey, the employees connected therewith, together with all appropriations for Mineral Resources under the Geological Survey, the records pertaining to said Division in the District of Columbia or elsewhere as provided in the act of February 14, 1903, supra. The transfers above-mentioned shall be effective from and including July 1, 1925. (Signed) CALVIN COOLIDGE. THE WHITE HOUSE, June 4, 1925. Mr. RICH. It was suggested that the Department of Commerce is also working on it. Dr. DEAN. Yes. The Bureau of Standards is under the Department of Commerce. Mr. O'NEAL. In the experimentation that is going on in the development of this work, are there two ideas in mind, that by these electric processes, based on cheap power, things can be done successfully which could not be done through the use of any other forms of fuel, and, furthermore, is it the idea that it may be done cheaper in the long run, due to the cheap power? Dr. DEAN. Both of those ideas enter into it. The question of geography also enters into it, for where we have cheaper electricity, we may not have a very satisfactory fuel at all. Mr. O'NEAL. But your experimentations are also along the lines of other fuels? Dr. DEAN. That is right; the substitution of electricity for other fuels. Mr. O'NEAL. But it is not entirely a development along the lines of cheaper electric power? Dr. DEAN. Not entirely; because the question of suitably located resources, other mineral resources which we want to develop, enters. Mr. O'NEAL. What about the comparison at the present time between using coke, for instance, in the ceramic process, as compared to electric heating? Dr. DEAN. I do not believe that the question of power cost or fuel cost enters greatly in ceramic ware, because it is, I believe, a small part of the total cost. It is more a question of the accuracy of control. Mr. O'NEAL. And, by electric heating, you can be more accurate? Dr. DEAN. It enables us to have a better control over firing. COOPERATION OF CENTRAL STATISTICAL BOARD (See p. 434) Dr. KIESSLING. Could I answer a question that Mr. Rich asked, on the amount of money saved through cooperation of the Central Statistical Board with us? I gathered that you wanted to know what economies result from cooperation between the Bureau of Mines and the Central Statistical Board. I may say that Dr. Furness and Dr. Finch are very busy men, and some of these things have to be delegated to others, and one of the first things that came up was the fact that the Census was going to make a canvass of the mining industry in 1935. The Bureau of Mines does not handle canvasses of that kind, and the Central Statistical Board raised the question of cooperation between the two agencies. Mr. Austin, the Director of the Census, and Director Finch got together and arranged this cooperation, and in this way the cost of doing that work for the Federal Government was reduced one-half, and in addition to that we obtained a lot of information that we would not otherwise have obtained, because the Census limits its efforts to the larger establishments and does not include the small miners which the Bureau is particularly interested in. So that we really saved for the Federal Government $200,000 on that single job, in addition to getting better results. Acting with the consent of the Director and the chief of the branch, I requested the Central Statistical Board to allot an expert to look over some of our districts, to see whether we could not do that more efficiently, and Mr. Leon of the Central Statistical Board's staff was assigned for this task and the report has been submitted to the Bureau. POSSIBILITY OF DUPLICATION OF WORK WHEN NEW COAL ACT BECOMES EFFECTIVE (See p. 434) Incidentally, this question which has been raised here regarding the possible duplication of work arising under the Guffey-Vinson Coal Act with the work of a statistical nature now done in the Bureau was taken up informally with the Board officials. We must keep in mind that we have really been through about three Guffey-Vinson Acts in the past, and the policy of the Bureau has been to volunteer immediately its services, and its services have fitted in very nicely with the work of the other administrative agencies. For instance, in connection with the Petroleum Administrative Board, our Petroleum Economics work actually functioned as a part of the Petroleum Administrative Board. Under the N. R. A. coal provisions, we cooperated in the same way, and under the recent Guffey Act, our men were drafted, and they served as key men in the new organization. We must keep in mind that the Guffey-Vinson bill is, of course, & bituminous coal bill, and that the coal work of the Bureau of Mines covers anthracite coal, briquets, and byproduct coke as well, and one of the first jobs of a big administrative agency like that which will be set up under the Guffey-Vinson Act will be to make tremendous tabulations of sales of any consequence, and in view of the fact that the Guffey-Vinson bill provides for a duration of only 4 years, and while it is difficult to look ahead, it is probable that the arrangement in the future will work very much as it has worked in the past. I think that that ought to clear that up to some extent. Mr. RICH. It clears it as far as I am concerned, but there is just this one question: So far as this Guffey coal bill is concerned, will the Administrative set-up under that act utilize the agencies already set up in the Bureau of Mines? Dr. KIESSLING. It is hard to jump over hurdles until you come to them, but the best answer to that is that all the agencies in the past have. We have had 50 years of experience in collecting these figures, and I cannot imagine that any such administrative agency will not need the same things that the other agencies have had in the past. Mr. RICH. You spoke of the mass of figures that it would be necessary to accumulate in connection with the Guffey-Vinson coal bill. Could that be simplified? Dr. KIESSLING. If you have the job of getting from 10,000 producers the extent of their sales, and where the coal is going, you have a tremendous job. That, I think, cannot be escaped, but all that I can say is that if the job were to be a personal responsibility of mine, one of my first ideas would be not to undertake anything that I would not have to do, and I would probably find it very advantageous to call upon the experience already available in other agencies having information similar to the kind that I wanted. Mr. O'NEAL. It would be very nice if they would reimburse you for some of the service that they required and that you furnished. Dr. KIESSLING. In most cases the work would probably be conducted as it has in the past, where one of our men who "knows his onions", so to speak, becomes head of a section composed of the personnel which is furnished by the administrative agency. In other words, one of our men is spread over 20 or 30 people, and I strongly suspect that anything developed in the future will be along similar lines. PUBLICATION OF MINERALS YEARBOOK Mr. SCRUGHAM. Mr. Kiessling, you are the editor of the Minerals Yearbook? Dr. KIESSLING. Yes, sir. |