United States Steel: A Corporation with a Soul. Arundel Cotter
Although the Corporation has added about 13,000,000 tons to its steel-making capacity its competitors have added a still larger amount with the result that the big company now controls less than half the steel production of the United States.B
B See Appendix, page 308.
Enjoying the confidence of a number of steel manufacturers competing with the Steel Corporation the writer has been unable after patient investigation to find any evidence of its having at any time used its immense wealth to undersell a competitor, large or small, with the purpose of driving it out of business, while he has discovered more than one instance where it has actually assisted competitors. A company, especially one whose very size exposes it to envy and attack, could not fail to earn the enmity of its competitors if its methods were not at all times fair and above suspicion. The “Steel Trust’s” competitors have time and again, privately and publicly and under oath, declared that they have no cause of complaint against it.
That this attitude on the part of the independent steel men was inspired solely by the fear that criticism levelled against the big corporation would involve a trade war directed against the critic and his consequent ruin has been suggested in irresponsible quarters. This is a poor compliment to the heads of some of the country’s leading industrial organizations. No one who knows Charles M. Schwab, John A. Topping, James A. Campbell, Willis King, E. A. S. Clarke, and other big steel “independents” would regard the charge as worthy of consideration.
How has the customer, the steel consumer, fared? The Corporation has always been slow to advance prices and equally slow to lower them. It has usually endeavored to prevent prices from reaching an abnormally high level in “boom” times, when overwhelming demand had placed the steel seller in control of the market, by setting a maximum quotation at a fair level permitting any manufacturer a fair profit, and has thus protected the consumer whose urgent need of the metal at a particular time made him a prey to profiteering. Such a course was followed in 1914 and in 1917, both periods of ascending prices. And it is being pursued again at the time this is written. To-day the steel maker who has material for immediate or early delivery can get enormous premiums, abnormally high prices, for his output. But the Corporation is selling at the levels agreed on in 1919 with the Industrial Board appointed at that time by the President and refuses to advance its price although the Government itself abrogated the arrangement. And whether for quick or deferred delivery it charges one price. It refuses to give delivery preferment for any consideration, saying in effect “first come, first served.”
And by endeavoring to prevent wild price reductions in periods of depression it has afforded protection to consumers who made their purchases at the top of the market, or near it, and who would have suffered heavy losses from a break in the steel market not only from the reduction in the value of their inventories but because their competitors might be able to buy steel at much lower prices and undersell them.
Has the public, which always pays the bill in the long run and whose interest is paramount, been injured? In the thirteen years from the Corporation’s organization to the beginning of the European war the tendency of steel prices has been downward, not only as compared with those of other commodities, which ascended, but on a dollar-and-cents basis. This tendency of prices will be discussed more fully in a later chapter. The war, it is true, brought about a decided advance in steel prices, but in comparison with other commodities they still show favorably. And there is no question that quality has improved.
No better illustration of the Corporation’s price policy can be found than that afforded by a comparison of the weighted average of actual prices received by it for the past eighteen years on ten principal products with Dun’s index number of all commodity prices indicating the fluctuations in living cost for the same period. In this comparison 1903 is taken as the base because, in that year, Dun’s index number was 99.456, or as nearly as possible 100.
| YEAR | DUN’S INDEX NUMBER | CORPORATION’S PRICE RECEIVED | INDEX NO. BASED ON CORP. PRICE | ||
| 1903 | 99.46 | $37.56 | 100.00 | ||
| 1904 | 97.19 | 33.15 | 88.3 | ||
| 1905 | 98.31 | 32.89 | 87.6 | ||
| 1906 | 105.22 | 34.54 | 91.8 | ||
| 1907 | 113.66 | 36.59 | 97.3 | ||
| 1908 | 108.17 | 36.19 | 96.3 | ||
| 1909 | 119.02 | 32.52 | 86.5 | ||
| 1910 | 119.17 | 34.10 | 90.7 | ||
| 1911 | 118.13 | 31.88 | 84.8 | ||
| 1912 | 122.28 | 30.03 | 80.0 | ||
| 1913 | 116.32 | 33.25 | 88.5 | ||
| 1914 | 119.71 | 30.60 | 81.4 | ||
| 1915 | 124.96 | 30.67 | 81.6 | ||
| 1916 | 145.14 | 41.31 | 109.9 | ||
| 1917 | 211.95 | 60.08 | 60.0 | ||
| 1918 | 232.57 | 68.86 | 83.5 | ||
| 1919 | 233.71 | 62.66 | 167.0 | ||
| 1920 | 260.41 | (nine | mos.) | 62.67 | 167.0 |