Word: steelmen
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Like a crapehanger whose predicted misfortune has finally come to pass, U.S. steelmen felt a certain grim satisfaction. When President Truman demanded expansion of steel capacity five months ago (TIME, Jan. 17), steelmen answered that the proposal was nonsense. The postwar demand for steel, they said, would soon overtake itself. Last week it began to look...
...Steelmen were not sure how long they could keep up their overcapacity production; the normal summer letdown was sure to cut output somewhat. But they thought that, barring a long coal strike, all industries would be able to get all the steel they wanted within six months...
...Steel's extra cut to its stockholders implied that steelmen expected the boom to continue. Said U.S. Steel's Chairman Irving S. Olds: "There has been little letup, almost no letup, in demand for steel." Bethlehem Steel's Chairman Eugene Grace entered a mild dissent: he had already detected some "softening in demand for many lines of steel." But Grace, who may have hoped by such talk to ease some of Washington's pressure for steel expansion, was not really pessimistic. Said he: "Even with the softening, I feel pretty safe in saying that our schedules...
Money Talks. Steelmen had some other plausible arguments against big expansion now. They pointed out that throughout the 1930s, capacity was far greater than the country's demand for steel. Even in recent years production has been below capacity because of strikes, shortages of scrap and coke, etc. But that argument lost some of its point recently. Production stood at 100% of capacity, and scrap had once again become plentiful enough so that the price was dropping...
Even New Dealing, rebellious Henry Kaiser, who believes in maximum expansion (he is currently spending upwards of $45 million on Fontana alone), agreed with other steelmen that the key to more expansion is the quicker-or more realistic-write-off of its cost. In lieu of that, Kaiser has adopted his own harsh substitute. He raised the price of his Fontana steel $30 a ton to apply against the Government debt on his plant...