STEEL AND STEAL
Steel and Steal AFIGHT can always be exepcted when either steel or coal is involved. A year ago Inst summer when the principal coal producers in the United States, with the acquiescence of...
...Steel, which is the twin brother of coal in our industrial life, appears to have involved us in a similar episode...
...A year ago Inst summer when the principal coal producers in the United States, with the acquiescence of Secretary Lane, volunteered to raise the price, Secretary Baker saved the situation by refusing to pay...
...The Industrial Board, a Government organization functioning under Secretary Redfield, but including representatives of other departments, has agreed to certain "reductions" in the price of steel...
...The lowest ton wage paid since 1901 occurred in 1905...
...The question at issue is not whether Judge Gary pays high wages or low wages...
...He carried his fight to the President and won...
...Judge Gary points to certain facts in extenuation of the present level and says that the present wages make up 85 percent, of the cost of making steel and that they have advanced 169 percent...
...It is simply a question of the amount of profit he is making and how much the steel corporation can afford to dispense with...
...Last year the United States Steel Corporation's total profits were $36 per ton on steel, or about two and a half times the total wage advance in the last four years The average profit on a ton of steel is 10 per cent more than the entire labor cost...
...Hines seems to hold the trump card...
...Probably Judge Gary can justify these figures, if he goes back to some remote period in the Christian era...
...The reductions leave prices still 80 per cent above the ten-year pre-war average...
...Since the Railroad Administration is the principal customer for steel, Mr...
...Taking this as a basis, we are still 35 percent short of Judge Gary's figures...
...Since 1914 the wages paid per ton have risen from $18.01 to $32.68, or 81 per cent...
...Cannot Judge Gary economize and let us have a small share of the surplus?—The Public...
...The Director General of Railroads emulating Mr...
...The principal difficulty in this case as in the coal case, seems to be that the Government itself did not fix the price but permitted the principal sellers to do so themselves...
...Baker, refuses to pay the new prices on the ground that the reductions are insufficient and that prices are still exorbitant...
...Nothing in recent history will justify the statement, however...
Vol. 11 • May 1919 • No. 5
