Word: blough
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...Realities. The new line in steel is based on what Blough deeply believes are the changing realities in the U.S. steel industry and the whole U.S. economy. One of these is the great danger of a never ending inflationary spiral from continuous boosts in wages and steel prices. But more important to the steel industry itself is the threat, for the first time in this century, of serious competition from abroad...
Says Republic Steel's President Thomas F. Patton: "First the foreign manufacturers took our foreign market. Then they went after our coastal markets. Now they're invading our inland markets. Everyone in the industry feels that foreign steel is a growing menace." Roger Blough has strong ideas about how that menace can be stopped. Says he: "A fundamental law of business is 'compete or die.' The only practical way to keep foreign-made products from overcrowding our markets at home is to compete in quality, price and service; and the only practical way to reach foreign...
Under Ben Fairless, Big Steel underwent its biggest expansion-and a growing friendliness with the unions. After Roger Blough went to U.S. Steel in 1942 from the Manhattan law firm of White & Case, he became experienced in labor negotiations. But he was a different sort of man from Fairless, and his attitude toward the union gradually stiffened in the face of its growing demands. He was hardly more than a year in the chairman's chair when the union in 1956 won its biggest wage victory. Blough has never forgotten that defeat. Says he blandly: "We would like...
Dutch Stubbornness. Blough runs Big Steel with the quiet confidence and sure hand of a man who thoroughly knows his job. He is a prodigious worker who still puts in twelve hours a day at the job of keeping tabs on every aspect of his business. He gets up at 5 or 6 a.m., jots down ideas and reads newspapers and magazines before arriving at the office around 8. He has half a day's work done before most of his executives come in, sometimes embarrasses them by assuming that everyone keeps his hours and calling their offices before...
...Blough is an alloy composed of shyness (he is still not well known in the steel industry on a personal basis), unpretentiousness and Pennsylvania Dutch stubbornness. He likes to sing hymns and old folk songs, browse in art galleries, cook in the old-fashioned kitchen of the Victorian, Hawley, Pa. house where he and his wife spend their weekends. He has two married twin daughters. He has the temperament and patience of an experienced trout caster (which he is), the fascination for things mechanical of an engineer (which he is not). He rarely goes on vacation, but likes to stroll...