The value of the tin imported into the country since 

 the beginning of the tin plate industry in 1893 has aggre- 

 gated approximately $700,000,000, according to this circular 

 of the National City Bank, about 90 per cent of it being used 

 in the manufacture of tin plate of which the production in 

 the United States grew from 42,000,000 pounds in 1892 to 

 2,766,401,227 pounds in 1917. With this large growth in our 

 domestic manufacture of tin plate has come what the bank's 

 statistician regards as an even more startling growth in our 

 exportation of that article. 



The value of our exports of domestic tin plate amounted 

 in the fiscal year 1898 to less than one thousand dollars; in 

 1908, it had reached $1,300,000 and, in 1918, it attained the 

 colossal figure of over $50,000,000. Of this large exportation 

 in 1918, according to the bank's circular, about $8,000,000 

 worth went to Argentina; $8,000,000 worth to Japan, $5,- 

 000,000 worth to Italy, $6,000,000 worth to Canada and ap- 

 proximately $2,000,000 worth to the Straits Settlements and 

 the Dutch East Indies, the two latter being the very sources 

 from which we drew most of the metallic tin used in the 

 manufacture of this enormous production of tin plate. Re- 

 membering that prior to the passage of the McKinley tariff 

 act, there had never been any tin-plate manufactured in 

 America, tin-plate production having been for centuries a 

 monopoly of Wales, and that ever since there has been and 

 now is no tin mined in the continental boundaries of the 

 United States, this exportation from our country of tin plate 

 to the tin producing regions of the Malayan and Dutch East 

 Indies is truly characterized in the bank's illuminating 

 circular as startling. 



The appeal to patriotism involved in the effort to create 

 a domestic production of tin is most impelling. And the ap- 

 parent opportunity to create such a production at Winslow 

 is inviting. Let it not be thought that I minimize or underes- 

 timate the difficulties of the undertaking. The location and 

 adequate development of virgin, underground minable ore 

 bodies is a slow, laborious, heart-breaking, purse-straining 

 brain-wearying struggle against the forces of Nature, as I 

 have been taught by practical experience in the gold-fields 

 of Alaska and Nova Scotia, the copper producing districts of 

 Maine and Montana, as an individual mine owner, and opera- 

 tor, and as a stockholder in some of the world's largest 

 mining corporations. But it is a man's sized job and the 

 rewards of success therein are commensurate to the risk and 

 labors incident thereto. 



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