The Korean War

The Korean War heightened concern about long-term materials supply in a world that felt threatened by Soviet expansionism. In January 1951, President Truman established a Presidential Commission to make an objective inquiry into the major aspects of the problem. The Survey furnished a full-time liaison and consultant and made studies of marginal ore reserves of several mineral commodities and of exploration and discovery practices for several important minerals for the Commission. The Commission in its report in June 1952 concluded that both the Government and private citizens must be involved in ensuring a long-term supply and that the effort should be carried on "not periodically at wide-spaced intervals, but day by day and year by year."³²

A cease-fire and armistice in Korea had been proposed in June 1951, 6 months after the Commission was appointed and a year before it issued its report, but the truce talks were stalemated for 2 years so there could be no complete return to peacetime conditions. When the armistice was finally concluded in the summer of 1953, a new Republican administration with a different perspective and the avowed purpose of reducing Government spending, balancing the budget, and reducing taxes had taken over in Washington. President Dwight Eisenhower called for a cooperative effort in resource development to "level off peaks and valleys"³³ in the economy, but the Appropriations Committee concluded that the Interior Department should be concerned only with functions or activities that private enterprise could not or would not undertake. Progress in the development of a minerals policy was suspended.