Tin

Last week the price of tin on the London Metal Exchange was -L-309 ($1497.11) a ton, the practical equivalent of the New York Metal Exchange's current quotation of nearly 70-c- a pound. These are slightly lower than the recent peak prices of more than -L-318 ($1,540.71) at London and more than 71-c- at Manhattan. London gambling in tin has apparently ceased for a while, but London's control of this metal has not, for Great Britain holds suzerainty over the Federated Malay States (holders of 50% of the world's tin ore stores*) and controls 75% of the world's smelters.

The U. S. insistently needs tin for bronzes, solders, collapsible tubes, pewter, babbitt and other bearing metals, type and brittania metals, tin foil for wrappings, soda fountain and chemical laboratory pipes, cans and boxes, white enamel, making silks heavy, mordants in dyeing textiles and printing calicoes. For these uses, this country last year imported 50% (76,646 long tons, value $95,121,000) of the total world supply of tin. This was an increase of nearly 20% over 1924 imports, whereas the world supply increased only 2% over that of 1924. On Dec. 31, 1925, there were only 2,654 tons of tin in the U. S. There is a world shortage of tin.

*The same ore veins run under the Pacific into the Dutch-owned islands of the Malayan Archipelago. The other great deposit is in the Bolivian Andes, 15,000 feet above sea level. Traces of tin have been found in Alaska on the edge of the Arctic Ocean but "no developments . . . justify any hope that the United States will eventually become independent of foreign sources of supply," according to the 1922 Tin report of the U. S. Tariff Commission. Practically no tin is found in continental U. S. Appreciable deposits exist in Cornwall (known since the time of the Phoenicians, the Philistines), Burma, Siam, China, Czechoslovakia, Germany, Portugal, Spain and scattered regions of Africa.