Needed: More Steel

For sweating U.S. steel companies, producing faster than ever before, production still came nowhere near meeting demand. Straining to catch up, four major steelmakers announced new expansion plans:

P:In Chicago, Inland Steel Co.'s President J. L. ("Joe") Block unwrapped a program that will cost $260 million and boost the No. 7 steel producer's ingot capacity 15% by 1959, to 6,000,000 tons.

P:Jones & Laughlin Steel Corp. (No. 4) planned to add $115 million to the $135 million already earmarked for growth, eventually boost its ingot capacity from 6,200,000 tons a year to 6,900,000.

P:Wheeling Steel Corp. (No. 10) announced that it will lay out $65 million to increase output of ingots and specialized products.

P:Bethlehem Steel Corp. (No. 2) tagged an extra $11 million for expansion, bringing its current program to $154 million. Chairman E. G. Grace guessed that the U.S. can use 5,000,000 more tons of steel capacity right away, will need another 5,000,000 in the next five or ten years.

Inland's expansion, like the others, is intended to meet not only present but future needs. Among Inland's projects: a seven-year exploitation, started in 1953, to expand iron-ore mining at Financier Cyrus Eaton's Steep Rock development in Ontario (TIME, March 9, 1953), from which Inland hopes to get 3,000,000 tons a year by 1969; a 19-story, stainless-steel office building, one of the few new skyscrapers in Chicago since the Depression; a land-filling project near Inland's Indiana Harbor plant on Lake Michigan's south shore to give Inland 462 acres of what is now lake for future plant expansion; three giant open-hearth furnaces; three new mills. Said Inland's Joe Block: "This program indicates our confidence in the future of the country, the Chicago area and the steel industry."

Block sees nothing but good things ahead, especially for steel companies in and around Chicago. The region uses one-third of U.S. steel production, but produces only 25%. Since steel users prefer to deal with makers close to home, Inland sells 60% of its output within 100 miles of Indiana Harbor. Because of its happy location, it has operated since 1933 at a higher rate than the industry average in every year except strike-ridden 1952. Last week it was operating at 106% of rated capacity v. the industry's estimated 98.2%.

Even with this profitable record, Inland has been reluctant to expand. But when bustling, 53-year-old Joe Block, grandson of Inland's founder, moved into the presidency 20 months ago, he brought some expansionist thinking with him. As vice president in charge of sales from 1936 to 1951 (with time out for a stint as steel expert on the War Production Board), he helped push yearly sales from $99 million to $519 million. As president, he turned his energy to improving efficiency, pushed Inland from eighth to seventh in the industry without adding a single open-hearth furnace.

Now Inland and its subsidiaries employ some 28,000 people. Its net income in the first nine months of 1955 was a record $36 million, $6.67 a share, compared with last year's $26 million and $5.25 a share on the smaller amount of stock then outstanding. Inland, which has paid dividends every year of its life except one (1933) last week declared a year-end dividend of $1.75 a common share, bringing 1955 payments to $4.25, or 50-c- more than in 1954.

Says President Block: "We thought we were being overoptimistic last winter when we predicted 100 million tons for the industry in 1955. What is it now? 115 million? Right now, you can't help but be optimistic."

This file is automatically generated by a robot program, so reader's discretion is required.