Space Prison by Tom Godwin.

A science fiction story that rivals the Swiss Family Robinson. A spaceship full of colonists on their way to their new planet is intercepted by the enemy. Half of them are taken as slaves; the other half are dumped on an 'earth-like' planet. Earth-like only in the sense that the air is fit to breathe, and the gravity is not too high. Despite a terrible death toll, some of the children survive to give rise to a second and third generation.

This book is fiction of the fairy-tale kind. There are enough stories of well-equipped colonies on earth who died to the last man to know that survival of a party of this nature is not very likely. Furthermore, the planet seems to be host to only about five animal species; certainly not enough for a viable ecology. I think it very unlikely that the technology to generate electricity will survive one generation of people who live without it. I also don't think that revenge as a motive will endure more than a few years under the conditions described.

A story with the distinct American point of view that existing solutions are enough to solve all our problems.

They needed aluminum ore of a grade high enough that they could extract the pure aluminum oxide. Specifically, the needed aluminum oxide ...
...
Only pretty rocks?—rubies and sapphire were corundum, were pure aluminium oxide!
...
The aluminum smelting continued until the supply of rubies and sapphires in the chasm had been exhausted but for small and scattered fragments. It was enough, with some aluminum above the amount needed for the wire.