20 
OUR MINERAL RESERVES. 
Shasta County, Cal., and such zinciferous dusts are accumulating 
in large quantities at the smelters in that region. 
With the establishment of peace in Mexico it is to lie expected 
that imports of zinc ore from that country will again reach large 
proportions, and likewise the imports from Canada may perhaps 
become larger even than they were in 1909, before the imposition 
of the tariff. With the closure of the Belgian and other conti 
nental markets to the zinc concentrates from Broken Hill, Australia, 
those concentrates may be partly diverted to the United States. If 
a sufficient foreign market becomes available the surplus smelter 
capacity in the United States might perhaps be employed in smelt 
ing foreign zinc ores under bond, and a business might grow up 
similar to that which exists in lead smelting. 
If an extensive business of smelting foreign zinc in bond should 
grow up it would probably be found desirable to build special 
smelters for that work at tidewater in the vicinity of New York 
City, convenient to fuel supplies and acid markets and to water 
transportation to Mexico and through the Panama Canal to British 
Columbia and Australia. This business could be done only at the 
expense of domestic production of zinc ore, for the present domestic 
production more than equals the apparent domestic consumption as 
spelter and as zinc oxide and bids fair to exceed it greatly in a 
year or two unless consumption is increased by the development of 
export trade in manufactured zinc and galvanized-iron products. 
The opening of the Panama Canal, the necessary establishment of 
American lines of transportation to South America, Australia, and 
the Orient, and in the present crisis the large dependence of those 
continents on the United States for their supply of zinc all make for 
a quick commercial introduction of the products of the United 
States zinc industry to those continents—an introduction which 
under other conditions might have taken years. 
It is known that large stocks of spelter exist in Europe. The 
Ironmonger, of London, gives the stocks at the end of March as 
73,000 long tons and quotes an estimate of 80,000 long tons for the 
end of April. At that rate the stocks on hand June 30 must have 
beeen considerably over 100,000 short tons, compared to 01,039 short 
tons in the United States. The greater part of the European stocks, 
however, must have been held in the interior and must now be iso 
lated, so that for the term of the war they may be disregarded. 
After the war what remains of these stocks will become available 
again and will possibly operate to depress prices, but in the mean 
time the United States zinc operators will have had the opportunity 
to dispose of domestic stocks and to become established in the for 
eign markets.