Word: steel
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Dates: during 1960-1969
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...present and the prospect left U.S. investors in a state of some confusion. Last week the Dow-Jones industrial average plunged by 14.81 points to a two-year low of 832.57. When the steel industry started announcing its price increases, the market turned up, actually ending the week at five points higher than it started...
This time the steel industry's timing was flawless. President Johnson had just announced his endorsement of a wage increase for the airline machinists. So why shouldn't U.S. corporations, which have long felt inhibited by the guideposts, increase the prices on their products...
First into the field was Chicago-based Inland Steel, the nation's seventh-ranking producer, whose Chairman Joseph Block, 63, was a Kennedy Administration hero for his 1962 part in upholding the guideposts principle. That was when President Kennedy went on television to denounce American steel-men-most particularly U.S. Steel's Roger Blough-as a band of economic bandits for having raised prices in violation of the guideposts. At that time Block refused to go along with the industry in proclaiming a price rise. A price hike was "untimely," according to Block, and Inland would keep prices...
Overworked and Fallacious. Block has long since wearied of the fact that the guideposts hampered both management and labor, and appeared to apply more to some industries than to others. "The thing that gripes me," he said last week, "is the overworked and fallacious idea that steel is the key. Steel and a few other so-called basic industries are expected to adhere rigidly to the prevailing prices while thousands of others, many concerned with such essential elements of the cost of living as food, clothing and shelter, go their merry way and raise prices at will...
...Administration's biggest complaints was the fact that no one had previously informed the White House about the pricing plans. And so, shortly before midnight, off went White House telegrams to steel magnates who had not yet decided what to do. This resulted in a certain amount of confusion. One Pennsylvania-based steel company chief executive was away from home as late as 1:15 a.m. When the phone rang, his teen-aged daughter answered, was startled to hear a Western Union operator inform her, she thought, that she was being invited to Washington to discuss the matter...