Antitrust: Pounding Brass

Attorney General Robert Kennedy’s Department of Justice last week moved against the U.S. brass industry. In Hartford, Conn., a federal grand jury handed down indictments against eleven major brass producers and seven of their officers for conspiring to fix prices on pipe and tubing sold to the Tennessee Valley Authority and municipal governments.

The list of defendants read like a Who’s Who of the industry. Named in the indictment were Anaconda American Brass, Phelps Dodge Copper Products, Chase Brass & Copper, Revere Copper & Brass, the Cerro Corp.. Bridgeport Brass, the Scovill Manufacturing Co., Calumet & Hecla. Mueller Brass, Triangle Conduit & Cable and the Progress Manufacturing Co.

Together, these companies sell each year about $360 million worth of brass mill tube and pipe—roughly 90% of total U.S. output.

Between 1956 and 1961, the Justice Department charged, representatives of these companies, including the seven individuals— also named in the indictment, agreed upon identical price schedules twice a year during conventions of the Copper & Brass Research Association and also at a series of ten private meetings at the New York Athletic Club. All the defendants immediately denied the charges.

If the jury that hears their case disagrees, the companies will be liable to fines of up to $50.000; the individual defendants could draw up to a year in prison.

* Anaconda Vice President Justice Lockwood, Phelps Dodge Copper President Edgar P. Dun-laevy, Cerro Vice President Richard H. Lewin, Scovill Sales Manager Maurice Liston, Mueller Vice President Alfred C. Dappert, Bridgeport Brass Vice President Richard L. Allen, and John M. Dumser, assistant to the president of Bridgeport Brass.