Word: mesta
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Dates: during 1930-1939
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Both, as U. S. corporations go, are small (United's assets are about $10,000,000, Mesta's $9,000,000). Though both are largely management-owned, both have stock outstanding with a public to which they are virtually unknown. United's contracts for last year included rolling mills for Henry Ford and Carnegie Steel. But it was Mesta that got the Bethlehem contracts last week...
...Mesta boasts that the only limit to the size of a machine part that it can turn out is the carrying capacity of any of the three railroads which spur into its West Homestead plant outside Pittsburgh. Castings weighing 165 tons have been poured in its foundries and machined in its shops. One of its prides is a gigantic press built for a Navy armor works that will exert a pressure of 14,000 tons. It has gear nobbing and planing machines for finishing gear wheels up to 17-ft. in diameter...
...Mesta makes money as well as machines. Its peak was 1930 when it reported a profit of $2,500,000. More notable, it continued to make profits throughout Depression, touching a low of $327,000 in 1932. Mesta has yet to report for 1934 but in the first half it made $400,000. And in the last half it boosted its dividend, paid a 66% stock dividend and retired $1,000,000 of preferred stock...
...Mesta's head is Lorenz Iversen, one of the ablest steel machinery engineers in the U. S. A Danish farm boy turned machinist, he went to sea for two years before migrating to the U. S. After working in a New Jersey shop, he went to Germany for further technical training, returning to a job in Mesta's drafting room...
...upward climb to Mesta's presidency, Engineer Iversen became a shrewd salesman with all the hitting power of a forging press. Not only can he sell his steelmaking machines to ordinary prospects. At least once he sold a buyer who had already let the contract to a competitor. He still speaks with a strong accent and lives in Pittsburgh's safe and solid East End. Sixtyish and no socialite, he is fanatic on the subject of personal publicity, has never permitted a photographer to enter his home or office. Perhaps the only picture of Lorenz Iversen in existence...