The large earnings of 1915-1920 were to a great extent appropriated for increase of property and plant that now has to be thrown away. Previous to the war the country had capacity for the production of 400,000 tons of zinc per annum. During the war this was increased to 800,000 tons. At the present time there is no reasonable expectation that in the future that can be foreseen there will be any use for more than 400,000 tons of this capacity. This means that this industry must discard and write off for plant a sum which even under pre-war conditions would stand at something like $25,000,000. Similarly, in copper we increased our capacity from 1.25 billion pounds per annum to two billion, and now have a surplus to write off. In pig iron we did not have extensive overbuilding. Against a pre-war nominal capacity for 43,000,000 tons per annum we have now a total of about 48,000,000, giving a surplus of about 5,000,000 tons, estimated at $40,000,000 under pre-war conditions. This last figure is for blast furnace plants alone and does not include anything for mines and steel works.
In point of fact the amounts of capital invested in plant for war purposes that must now be written off is much greater than these figures would indicate, for the cost of these additions to plant was very much . greater, even as much as two times as great, as it would have been under the pre-war conditions that these figures reflect. Besides the appropriation of become available. They show a total of $4,366,000,000 of ‘‘Capital”’ in the mining industry exclusive of petroleum. “Capital” and “Value” are, of course, two different things. I prefer the guidance of my own
estimates rather than those of the Census, but the latter may be considered in a way to support my estimates.
