Feudin’ & Fussin’

By Hatfield-McCoy standards, there was too much talk and not anywhere near enough damage. But nobody could accuse Henry Kaiser and Republic Steel’s President Charles M. White of not trying. Kaiser, in a surprise deal with War Assets Administrator Jess Larson, had snatched the Government’s $28 million Cleveland blast furnace from under White’s nose (TIME, Aug. 30); last week, when Senator Kenneth Wherry’s Small Business Committee looked into that deal, the feud was out in the open.

Kaiser charged that White had “tried to blackjack the Government” into letting Republic have the plant dirt-cheap. He told how once, on the telephone, White had called him “the kind of fellow that carries a pistol in his pocket.” When Kaiser tried to recall the date, White offered to provide it. Said he: “I had a stenographer on the telephone.”

Sneered Kaiser: “You would have.”

Sneered White: “You’re goddamned right I would have.”

Kaiser had another complaint. White had refused to let Kaiser set foot on his new property until after midnight Aug. 31 (when Republic’s interim lease expired). WAAdministrator Larson confirmed this. White, he said, had told him: “It’s going to give me a lot of pleasure to make it tough for those bastards.”

Though he had lost the plant, White was still fighting. His talk about cutting off some 400 northeastern foundries from their pig-iron supplies had whipped up terrific pressure from the foundrymen. Moreover, White knew that the plant, which Republic built, was so much a part of Republic’s other operations that it could never be cut out of them without a long shutdown. Kaiser confessed that he was in for trouble unless the committee could “make a Christian out of White.”

The committee soon discovered that Republic needed the plant’s hot metal (to make steel) as badly as the foundrymen needed the pig iron. That gave White and Kaiser a reason to get together. At week’s end, the two old feuders parked their popguns and signed a temporary truce.

Under it, Kaiser-Frazer got the plant, but agreed to let Republic run it until next May; by then Republic was expected to have a new pig-iron source. Meanwhile, Republic will supply K-F with 5,000 tons out of its monthly 37,500-ton pig-iron production. Charlie White had driven a shrewd bargain. His rent to Kaiser-Frazer is $1.40 a ton of iron produced, while Kaiser-Frazer must pay WAA $1.50. Thus, as long as White runs the plant, Kaiser loses a dime on every ton of iron that Republic makes.