Word: alcoa
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Dates: during 1940-1949
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Friendship on the Line. In many struck plants, relations between pickets and management were cordial. When rain and snow fell outside the giant aluminum plants at Alcoa, Tenn., the two pickets at each gate ducked into the warm guardhouses, chatted with the guards and company officials...
...weightiest brickbat had been the charge that Alcoa had blocked the disposal of surplus Government aluminum plants. Alcoa had refused, said SPAdministrator W. Stuart Symington, to license its patents on its process of converting low-grade bauxite into alumina (which is in turn smelted down to aluminum). This had blocked SPA's deal to lease the Hurricane Creek plant (which operates on low-grade bauxite) and Jones Mills aluminum plant to the Reynolds Metals Co. (TIME, Dec. 31). Alcoa's frail, grey-haired vice president, I. W. Wilson, had indignantly denied the charges. He did not stop there...
...Washington he sat down with Symington and held a joint press conference. Alcoa, they announced, had decided to give the use of its patents covering extraction of alumina from bauxite to the Federal Government. It can license operators of Government-owned plants to compete with Alcoa. In an atmosphere perfumed with sweet reasonableness, Wilson told why Alcoa had done it. Said he: "Mr. Symington is a very fine salesman...
...Alcoa got no immediate return for its generosity. But if the move creates enough competition for Alcoa, it may, paradoxically, be repaid, by saving itself from being broken up as a monopoly...
...Reynolds was highly pleased with his lease. Now he has his eye on other RFC aluminum plants in Troutdale, Ore. and Spokane, Wash. These would permit him to step up production at Hurricane Creek, now scheduled for only 25% of capacity. It will also be the best proof that Alcoa is no longer a monopoly...