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Show Lead-Zinc Stabilization Act Co-sponsored by Sen. Moss Co-sponsorship of the Lead and Zinc Stabilization Act of 1959 was announced by U. S. Senator Frank E. Moss (D). Presented to the U. S. Senate, the bill will stabilize the domestic price of lead at 15 cents per pound and zinc at 13 cents during a base quarter, Thereafter, the price would be. tied, on a quarterly quar-terly basis, to changes in the average av-erage price index, , "President Eisenhower's failure to follow recommendations of th Tariff Commission, and the resulting present low price level has made a new approach necessary neces-sary if we are to save the lead-zinc lead-zinc industry," Mr. Moss said. Patterned after the National Sugar Act, the bill was introduced intro-duced by Senator James E. Murray, Mur-ray, Chairman of the Senate Committee on Interior and Insular Insu-lar Affairs. Senator Moss is a member of that committee, and in a speech before the National Western Mining Conference on February 7, in Denver, had said that he was working with Sen. Murray on this approach to the lead-zinc problem. "Senator Murray has assured me that he will call hearings soon," said Senator Moss, "with the hope that the Interior Committee Com-mittee will report it in plenty of time to receive thorough consideration con-sideration by both Houses." Senator Moss emphasized that no appropriatoin will be needed for the legislation and it, therefore, there-fore, will not affect the budget. "Representatives of labor arid industry have cooperated fully in trying to seek an answer to their problems under the present law. This is the only industry in the U. , S. that has been before the Tariff Commision twice and has received two unanimous findings of injury. Other attempts to seek relief through Congressional ac- tion also have failed, and the net result is that the industry has not received the assistance it must have," he said. Under the new legislation, the Secretary of Commerce would be charged with the duty of keeping keep-ing the price at prescribed levels through a system of import quotas. quo-tas. Each quarter the Secretary will determine what quantities of the two metals could be imported without causing the price to fall below the prescribed minimum. Each exporting country would be assigned quotas based on the percentage of XJ, S. imports of the two metals from that country in 1956. "In the short span of ten years we have seen employment in Utah's underground lead-zinc mines and the mills drop from 3200 people to 1400," he said. "And the number of operating companies dropped from 21 in 1949 to nine in 1957. The decrease de-crease continues, and today we have only a thousand people employed em-ployed and three operations of any real significance in lead and zinc." The Utah Democrat also noted that during this interval Utah has lost two of its three smelters. smel-ters. The Midvale and Murray smelters have been closed permanently per-manently because production has simply been too small to make 'them profitable. The lead-zinc smelter at Tooele is still in operation, op-eration, but present conditions will probably put an end to that too, the Senator said. The price structures called for in the Senate bill are the same as those supported by the administration ad-ministration when the problem of lead and zinc was before the Congress last year, Senator Moss noted. i |