PowerPoint Show by Andrew

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When the United States joined World War II after the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor, the global trade of raw materials was in a state of uncertainty and disruption. Basic commodities such as rubber and cloth immediately became precious and valuable to the war effort.

Scrap drives were organized across the country, encouraging citizens to contribute their rubber to make jeep tires, their clothing to make cleaning rags, their nylon and silk stockings to make parachutes, and their leftover cooking fat to make explosives.

One of the most vital materials to collect was scrap metal. A single medium tank required 18 tons of it, and a single Navy ship hundreds more.

Oct. 5, 1942Governor Leverett Saltonstall applies a blowtorch to the iron fence in front of the Massachusetts State House.

Steel cannot be made without scrap. It is as impossible to make steel without scrap iron as it is to make biscuits without flour, or to make an ice cream soda without ice cream.

"Our soldiers are men of valor and fortitude but this is a war in which raw courage is no match for cold steel. Modern warfare is highly mechanized.

Thousands of our finest youth will be slaughtered if we send them into battle without tanks and planes and guns that our superiors to the arms of our foe. We must have 17 million tons of scrap iron in order to keep the steel mills running at full capacity through the winter." Kentucky Governor Keen Johnson, Oct. 2, 1942

Oct. 7, 1942Virginia Bohlin of the Boston Herald-Traveler holds an old tilting helmet bound for the scrap heap.

Drive organizers pose with donated license plates.