Business: Tin Cans Full

Last week tin plate production boomed up to 100% of capacity—highest level in its 40 years of history. But not since the trust-forming days of William Bateman Leeds, the one & only tin plate king, has there been a tin plate industry, separate and distinct. “Tin Plate” Leeds and his fabulous friends, Judge William Moore, promoter extraordinary, and Daniel Gray (“Czar”) Reid, tossed their tin plate trust into T. S. Steel Corp. at a price which made the Elder John Pierpont Morgan groan. What they did keep was the tin can trust. Today most tin plate is made by steel companies and most tin plate is used by can companies. For American Can is no longer a trust but merely the biggest concern in a competitive field. Thus the present tin plate boom is in reality a tin can boom, for as every one knows tin cans are not made of tin but of sheet steel thinly coated with tin. Exports have soared with the slumping dollar. Nearly 20,000,000 lb. of oil tins were recently ordered for the Far East where after the oil is used they are freely bought & sold for homebuilding, wagon repairs and other purposes. In the U. S. can-makers’ inventories are low and a large fruit & vegetable pack is expected. The Hawaiian pineapple pack is estimated at 8,000,000 cases against 5,000,000 last year. Messrs. Moore, Reid & Leeds wound up and ran their companies like small boys playing with toy trains. When they retired with enormous promoting profits, they carried the same methods into their glittering social life. “Tin Plate” Leeds paid his first wife $1,000,000 for a divorce. His widow managed to wed Prince Christopher of Greece and his son married and was divorced by Princess Xenia of Russia.* Judge Moore’s two prides were a stable of 70 horses and a $19,000 fur coat, most expensive garment ever worn by a U. S. male. Czar Reid specialized in parties. Their companies (which also included Diamond Match and National Biscuit) waxed great but under less exciting management. Today the tin plate trade points to the bulky, genial, 200-lb. president of McKeesport Tin Plate as its only character who even remotely approaches the legendary trio of Moore, Reid & Leeds. Edwin Robert Crawford learned steel as an auditor but instead of picking the high road of promotion to glory, he built his own plant in 1902. McKeesport grew up to be one of the largest independent makers of plate. Individualistic, patriarchal to employes, President Crawford proudly boasts that by staggering work he has laid off no men, that he has paid 1929 dividends throughout the Depression. His plants, thoroughly modern, are within a stone’s throw of the old Crawford farm where he built a palatial home so that he could hear the rumble of the rolling mills from his bedroom window. But instead of winding up companies like his predecessors, Steelman Crawford for exercise winds up the huge collection of clocks in his barn.

*The Leeds trust, established for luxurious Son William is said to have yielded $800,000 a year throughout the Depression.