STEEL: Cheaper than Dirt

Steelmakers are practically certain they will have to boost steel prices after Philip Murray’s C.I.O. Steel Workers get their raise. In San Francisco last week, at the annual meeting of the California Manufacturers Association, U.S. Steel Corp.’s President Benjamin F. Fairless did a little spadework in preparation for the rise.

Said Fairless: “The average price of all the finished steel we have sold this year has been just under a nickel a pound, and some of our products now sell at less than 3½¢ . . . What else in the world can you buy for 3½¢ a pound? Eggs, butter, meat? . . . There is literally nothing in our grocery store at home that Mrs. Fairless can buy for as little as 3½¢ a pound … If you lived among the cliff dwellers of New York City, and if you wanted a little potting soil to put around your geranium plants on your window sill, you could buy it at your neighborhood seed store for 7¢ a pound . . . Steel is literally cheaper than dirt!”