When government imagines a reason to spend money, it can be very hard to make it stop. Elon Musk is soon to find this out. Stopping can take a very long time, even when the government didn’t need to spend the money at all. Consider what happened after oil men drilled a well under William Greenwell’s farm outside Dexter, Kansas, in 1903.
The well — what oil men called a "howling gasser" — spewed some nine million cubic feet of gas per day. But to the disappointment of the townspeople, it wouldn’t burn. Curious chemists found that it was only 15% methane. Seventy-two percent was nitrogen, which doesn’t burn. Among the remaining inert residue, they found nearly two percent was helium.
This news was of little interest to anyone but chemists. Helium is the second most abundant element in the universe but extremely rare on Earth. Traces had been found in a few minerals but none as a gas, and for a simple reason. Helium molecules are tiny — the escape artists of the periodic table. Release them and they will rise into space, Earth’s gravity unable to stop them.
At first the only natural gas in which helium was found in meaningful amounts was in the United States. At the time there was no known use for helium, but being much lighter than air it proved ideal for keeping blimps aloft. Hydrogen lifts as well, but burns easily. Helium does not burn at all.
Enter the federal government. Congress passed the National Helium Act in 1925 — one hundred years ago — to supply the army with a fleet of blimps. The act declared helium a strategic resource and limited its sale to foreign buyers. The German airship Hindenburg burned on May 6, 1937, at Lakehurst, New Jersey, because it was filled with hydrogen. The United States government had monopolized helium.
The vast fleet of blimps never materialized but new uses for helium were found — to test rockets, spacesuits, and nuclear reactors for leaks and as an environment for arc welding. Liquefied helium is used to cool rocket fuel and the magnets in Magnetic Resonance Imaging (MRI) machines. Helium is used in semiconductor manufacturing and is essential for many kinds of scientific research.
To meet rising demand, the government sold helium to private distribution companies. Demand soon attracted private producers. Before long they produced helium more efficiently than the government.
This was a moment the government might have abandoned the helium business, but the government doubled down. In the 1960s the government began buying up helium and pumping it into a vast underground reservoir. This occurred even as helium was found elsewhere globally (though even now most helium is produced here).
The problem is that once the government is involved in the marketplace for anything in a big way it warps the market. When it leaves the marketplace, it can do the same thing. This is precisely what happened when the government finally decided to get out of the helium business. In 1996 Congress mandated the sale of the reserve over 20 years at the minimum price needed to retire the $1.4 billion debt incurred to acquire and store the stuff.
This price dramatically undercut private companies. In the short-term cheap government helium encouraged overconsumption and discouraged commercial production, forced private production facilities to close, and set the stage for a serious shortage.
Congress corrected its error in 2013 by mandating that helium be released in increments and sold at auction to stabilize the market. Prices remained artificially high, but the restoration of a competitive market encouraged private companies to open plants and invest in production.
The new legislation extended federal involvement to 2021. Scientists, who consume around 10% of the helium produced in the United States, urged the government to hold on to the reserve, to no avail. The government finally divested itself of the last of the helium reserve in January 2024 after almost a century in the helium business.
German intellectual Max Weber described governance as the "slow boring of hard boards, "that is anyone determined to effect change, Weber said, must be prepared to devote himself to his cause with unyielding determination even "when the world is too stupid or too base for what he wants to offer."
There was never a compelling reason for the government to get into the helium business and extracting the government from it was no simple thing. As Elon Musk surely knows, there are rarely simple solutions to complex problems. And achieving efficiency in government is rarely efficient.
Jack Warren is an authority on the history of American politics and public life and editor of The American Crisis, an online journal of history and commentary (www.americanideal.org). His newest book is, "Freedom: The Enduring Importance of the American Revolution." Read Jack Warren's Reports — More Here.
© 2025 Newsmax. All rights reserved.