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 The
duties of the Defense Supplies Corporation covered a wide range of activities.
It bought and sold high-octane gasoline to the air services. It purchased
all of Cuba's sugar and molasses crops for three years -- materials that
were essential to the alcohol and synthetic rubber programs. It also bought and stored quinine, typhus fever serum, opium and other medicines required by the Army and Navy. More than $2,700,000,000 dollars in subsidies and grants were distributed. Some subsidies were granted to stabilize consumer prices. In fact, the largest subsidies were used to hold down the price the public paid for bread, meat and butter. Rubber Reserves Company Created in 1940, Rubber Reserves Company was in charge of buying all available natural rubber in the open market. Leading up to the war, domestic use of rubber, due to the automobile, had risen sharply. Rubber had a high rank among strategic materials because of its many uses, from airplane wheels to blood-plasma tubing and bridge pontoons. The U.S. attempted to stockpile natural rubber until the Japanese cut off the Southeast Asian supply. It also coordinated a scrap rubber program where the Rubber Reserves Company bought the country's used rubber by the short ton. Eventually, Jones realized that the country would need to turn to synthetic rubber and he set about building a new industry. During this time, the four major rubber companies were experimenting with processes to develop synthetic rubber. Jones called on B.F. Goodrich Company, a pioneer in the development of synthetic rubber suitable for tires, to advise the federal government on how to set up what amounted to an untried industry. The new venture became a huge success. During World War II, Rubber Reserves Company supplied more than 3 billion pounds of synthetic rubber. By the end of war, 87 percent of U.S. rubber consumption was synthetic. The synthetic rubber program suffered some controversy due to a delay in getting it off the ground. When it became almost impossible for a civilian to purchase a new tire, Roosevelt was forced to form a committee to look into the crisis. The committee recommended the establishment of a separate Rubber Director to oversee the program. William M. Jeffers, president of Union Pacific Railroad, was appointed to this position and stewarded the construction of the synthetic rubber industry with Jones. Metals Reserve Company The first challenge faced by Jones and the Metals Reserve Company was to find a source of tin supply and then manufacture it. At the time, the U.S. was the biggest consumer of tin. However, the country had no facilities to smelt tin, nor did it have any tin-bearing ores. When Hitler took Holland, he gained the largest tin smelter in the Western Hemisphere. With the assistance of a Dutch tin company, Metals Reserve Company and Defense Plant Corporation built and operated the largest tin smelter the world had known at Texas City, Texas. This operation became essential to both the U.S. and England, and Jones was considered the man to see if one needed this precious material. Lord Beaverbrook, British Minister of Supply, wrote to Prime Minister Winston Churchill in a 1942 letter, "Do you want tin? It is a Jesse Jones business." By the end of the war, Metals Reserve Company had spent almost four billion dollars on its operations. It acquired 50 different minerals and metals in the U.S. and abroad including tin, zinc, copper, lead and iron, nickel, tungsten, chrome ores, mica, silver and gold. 
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