Word: kaiser
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Dates: during 1940-1949
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...Hatfield-McCoy standards, there was too much talk and not anywhere near enough damage. But nobody could accuse Henry Kaiser and Republic Steel's President Charles M. White of not trying. Kaiser, in a surprise deal with War Assets Administrator Jess Larson, had snatched the Government's $28 million Cleveland blast furnace from under White's nose (TIME, Aug. 30); last week, when Senator Kenneth Wherry's Small Business Committee looked into that deal, the feud was out in the open...
...Kaiser charged that White had "tried to blackjack the Government" into letting Republic have the plant dirt-cheap. He told how once, on the telephone, White had called him "the kind of fellow that carries a pistol in his pocket." When Kaiser tried to recall the date, White offered to provide it. Said he: "I had a stenographer on the telephone...
Larson had some good cards in his hand, too. Last week, he abruptly stopped haggling with Republic, turned to Henry Kaiser, who had once shown an interest in the plant. Asked Larson: Would Kaiser be willing to pay a minimum rent of $800,000 a year? Kaiser, who needs steel for his Kaiser-Frazer automobiles and knows that he can swap pig iron for it, jumped at the offer...
...Charlie White's anger was as incandescent as molten steel. He fired a sizzling telegram to Larson protesting his "clandestine negotiations" as contrary to "good morals." White claimed that, including tonnage royalties, his offer would have netted the Government $1,275,000 compared with $1,248,000 from Kaiser. (WAA said Kaiser's rental would exceed $1,500,000.) White also wired 403 of his foundry customers that Republic was "going out of the pig iron business." By week's end, the frightened foundries were deluging WAA with protests...
Unperturbed, WAA's Larson curtly wired White to turn everything over to Kaiser-Frazer. Then Edgar Kaiser, Henry's son, dropped in at Republic to take over. Poker Player White felt like the Eastern tenderfoot who started to take in the pot on a royal flush, only to have a Western pro lay down a pair of deuces and announce that he had a Galoola Bird. The Westerner pointed to a sign on the wall...