Out of the Jungle

By the deal, the biggest in steel industry history, Bethlehem Steel Corp. would get enough scrap to keep its five eastern plants running for at least four months. The only trick was to get the scrap to the U.S. from the jungles of 16 far Pacific islands, where it lies among great dumps of war surplus. But Bethlehem Steel, which had contracted to pay $30,000,000 for the scrap, hoped to get the first shipload in a month. To the scrap-starved steel industry, it could not come too soon.

Not even Bethlehem Steel was sure how much it had bought. It hoped to get 1,000,000 tons, and might get double that, although it would take more than a year to haul that much to the U.S. There were thousands of tons of scrap such as landing mats and vehicles abandoned by the U.S. Army & Navy at war’s end. This war surplus property, about an estimated $500,000,000 when it was new, had been turned over to China by the U.S. to pay a $174,000,000 reverse Lend-Lease debt. China had moved some of the surplus but it lacked the transportation to move the scrap. So it was as glad to sell as Beth Steel was to buy.