RESUMEN
Following World War II, Americans feared their iron ore supplies were depleted. The steel industry attempted to increase supplies by exploring foreign countries for new, high-grade hematite ores and experimenting with technology that upgraded low-grade domestic taconite ores into acceptable, but apparently uneconomical, pellets. Government did little at first, but the Korean War renewed fears of domestic resource exhaustion. Congress quickly enacted loan guarantees, rapid tax write-offs, and other tax policies that helped commercialize taconite pellets for national defense. These policies lingered long after the Korean War ended. Other policies bolstering taconite were enacted on the state level well after taconite had replaced hematite as industry's ore of choice. Understanding how government policies helped to develop pelletized lean iron ore may help in thinking about current policy suggestions aimed at easing our energy crisis or other mineral shortages. For taconite, too much government help came too late.
RESUMEN
Resource gathering is depending on leaner crude ores. Iron ore mining typifies this trend. To make lean taconite iron ores useful required a technologic breakthrough-pelletization. The shift to iron ore pellets has the advantage that they require less energy and labor per ton of molten iron than high-grade naturally concentrated ores. Increased reliance on pellets causes a geographic shift of some jobs and environmental effects from blast furnaces to iron ore mines.