Reduced Goose

President Charles Ruffin Hook of American Rolling Mill Co. still has the "little black book" in which he budgeted his $2 weekly salary as an office boy for Cincinnati Rolling Mill & Tin Plate Co. in 1898. Armco's Mr. Hook also still has the conviction he developed while working up through the steel industry--that the No. 1 Big Business problem is its relations with employes and public. In 1911 Armco's General Superintendent Hook married President George Verity's daughter, Leah.

When Charley Hook succeeded George Verity as president in 1930, he had ample opportunity to test his theories of an "open-book" business policy. Last month his success in this line won him the job of president of the National Association of Manufacturers.

General Food's Chairman Colby Chester, who is largely responsible for converting N. A. M. to a policy conciliatory toward the Roosevelt Administration, remains its guiding spirit as chairman of the executive committee, but on the president falls most of the active N. A. M. work. As part of it, President Hook last week made a speech in Pittsburgh. Said he: "To state that America is overproduced, overbuilt and oversold is the sheerest tommyrot. . . . The business future is currently brighter than for months because there is on the part of Congress a more sympathetic attitude toward business. . . ."

Two days after Steelman Hook's remarks came an event which, on the surface, seemed to indicate a more sympathetic attitude of business toward Congress. This was a $4-a-ton cut in the price of cold rolled steel sheets, on the same day that U. S. Steel Corp. signed a new contract with Labor maintaining wages at the same level as before Only last month President Benjamin Franklin Fairless of U. S. Steel wrote the Senate Committee to Investigate Unemployment & Relief that "it is clear that prices cannot be reduced without corresponding reduction in costs, of which wages are the most important part." This produced the following retort from President Roosevelt: "The only way to get volume is to produce goods for a price the public will pay. . . . But that does not mean that such price reductions can come out of wages. Industrialists kill the goose which lays the golden egg when they keep prices up at the expense of employment and purchasing power."

What had brought steel prices down, however, was apparently something more realistic than a desire to placate Mr. Roosevelt. Hudson Motor Car Co. is supposed to have got a substantial reduction for steel for its new low-priced" car. General Motors is said to have ordered 5,000 tons from Republic Steel as soon as the low price could be made effective. Steel production for the week rose only from 30%' to 31% of capacity, but Cleveland's statistical Colonel Leonard P. Ayres declared: "These developments terminate what was a kind of deadlock in business. From now on we are going to have a flexible instead of an inflexible price scale and apparently we shall also escape major labor difficulties. Both will be good for business."

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