Word: steelmen
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Nevertheless, steelmen were watching not the U.S. Government but U.S. Steel to see how prices would ultimately shake out. The industry leader, with 24.5% of total production, U.S. Steel had led off the price increases with a modest change in one item, tin plate, and the President publicly approved the "selective" move. When it came time to move again last week, U.S. Steel was as polite as its competitors had been imprudent. Cannily using the key word, it announced increases on "selected" products. All told, they covered 63% of the industry's output, included such important items...
Alcoa President John D. Harper figures that peace would cost his company only 5% of its present tonnage of sales, a loss that would be quickly overcome by such resurgent civilian business as construction and commercial aircraft Oil and steelmen are equally unworried. Says Gulf Oil Chairman E D Brockett: "We could get back to doing a lot of things we should be doing...
...move should not have come as a surprise. Steel producers have been increasing prices by bits and pieces throughout the year. Just before Labor Day, the Administration finally reacted when Republic Steel upped the price of steel bars by 1.8%. The industry ignored Government protestations. What is more, steelmen went to Washington in September, made it clear that further increases would follow...
...Little, Too Late. The producers point out that during the first nine months of 1967, when profits were off as much as 30%, Ackley and the Council of Economic Advisers assured them that a turnaround was coming. Now that orders are finally picking up, the steelmen claim that the increase in business is too little, too late, and based on artificial conditions rather than on an upsurge in the economy. They credit the rise to the fact that automakers and other major steel users are stockpiling with an eye towards next summer, when the United Steelworkers are threatening to strike...
Block made his major reputation as a maverick through his refusal to join the rest of the industry in raising steel prices during the abrasive 1962 confrontation with the Kennedy Administration. Block, an Eisenhower Republican, answered the grumbles of other steelmen by denying he was cozying up to the Administration, insisting simply that "it was the wrong time to raise prices." Since then, he has repeatedly complained that Washington has made steel its "favorite whipping boy," last year pointedly took the industry lead in raising steel prices...