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THE SECRETARY OF THE INTERIOR

HAROLD L. ICKES, Secretary

MY DEAR MR. PRESIDENT: This annual report seeks to show how the mobilized resources of this Nation contributed to victory over the Axis nations. It also reveals how near that victory came to being a Pyrrhic one.

At the beginning of the period here covered we were still searching the earth for the minerals that were needed in ever-increasing quantities to equip our own fighting forces as well as those of our allies. While we were searching for these minerals with meticulous diligence we were spending them with wanton prodigality.

By the end of the period of this report our natural resources had been tapped, processed and sent to the battlefields in such prodigious quantities that Nazi Germany already had collapsed, and Japan was about to do so.

But the drain on our national natural assets had been staggering. Only nine of the major minerals remain in our known domestic reserves in great enough quantity of usable grade to last 100 years or more. Our known usable reserves of 22 essential minerals have dwindled to a 35-year supply or less. Our assured domestic deposits of petroleum would last from 14 to 20 years at our present rate of use, but our prospects of making good on some of our losses in oil are fairly good.

In some other fields of conservation, the damage of war has been just as real, though it may prove to be temporary, and certainly it has been less severe. We were obliged to complete our huge powerproduction facilities ahead of schedule to energize war plants where there was no comparable peacetime manufacture to sustain the plants after the war. We must find new markets for those facilities or suffer the consequences of unemployed power which is scarcely more healthful economically than are unemployed men.

The war has reduced much of Europe and Asia to such a shambles, physically or economically or in both respects, that great populations abroad cannot provide the essentials of existence for themselves.

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