After All ...

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 as if it had.

U.S. Steel's biggest subsidiary, Carnegie-Illinois Corp., shut down five of its Pittsburgh open-hearth furnaces for lack of orders. In Cleveland, Republic Steel Corp. closed one of its blast furnaces. As orders for specialty steels slacked off, Lukens Steel Co. laid off 150 men. This week, for the first time in 1949, steel output will fall below last year's rate for the same week (94.1% of capacity v. 96.8%).

As steelmen met in Manhattan's Waldorf-Astoria last week for the American Iron & Steel Institute's annual convention, Secretary of Commerce Charles Sawyer, Harry Truman's good-will ambassador to U.S. business, brought them mixed tidings. For one thing, they were not alone in their doldrums; in April, Sawyer's economists had reported, the sales of all manufacturers slumped $1.2. billion from March to the lowest monthly total ($16.9 billion) this year. But Sawyer was optimistic : the gross national output, as he pointed out later in the week, was still running ahead of 1948, there was still a strong demand in many lines, and price supports and unemployment benefits would cushion any decline in incomes. For the steelmakers themselves, Sawyer had a special word of cheer. "The Government," said Sawyer, "never intended to take over the steel business." He added that businessmen should be permitted to run their own enterprises without Government interference; after all, said he, "they know more about business than Government officials [do]."

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