From: johnson@whitewater.chem.wisc.edu (Arthur Johnson)
Newsgroups: soc.culture.african.american
Subject: D & J Steel, Inc. (was Re: Apportioning blame)
Date: 30 Sep 92 16:17:10 GMT
Article-I.D.: pslu1.1992Sep30.161710.10176
Distribution: usa
Organization: Physical Sciences Lab, UW-Madison

In article <1992Sep29.002858.681@morrow.stanford.edu>  
HF.GTD@forsythe.stanford.edu (Gabrielle Daniels) writes:
> Its
> going to take forever for black Republicans to get up enough capital
> to put those black Bethelehem Steel workers into jobs.  Talk is
> cheap for them.

     Hey, who says a black person has to be a Republican to own a  
business? I think I see the hand of a Socialist-Sympathizer (a Soc-Symp!)  
at work here. :-) :-) Seriously though, setting up something as complex as  
a steel mill is not nearly as simple as I made it sound. But before we  
both just throw up our hands, say it's too hard, and roll over and play  
nice doggie on this, let's think for a minute. If we really wanted to give  
these young black men the opportunity to work in the profession for which  
Bethlehem Steel has so generously educated them for, i.e.  
steelmaking/metallurgy, how would we go about setting up a mini-mill?

     Well, first of all, what kind of steel are we going to make, and is  
there a market for it? I think that Alan Carroll is right about a  
"specialized steel" being the way to go; if we tried to make rolled sheet  
steel like we've all seen in Big Steel ads, Bethlehem would just laugh and  
proceed to hand our heads to us. And a "mini-mill" does cost a lot less to  
start up. But who would buy our steel? My first guess would be to try to  
export it, because we wouldn't have to worry as much about white racists  
trying to kill the business by declaring a "boycott" against us and  
against domestic white customers. Africa might be a good place to look to  
as a market. I'm serious. But we'd have to really think hard about the  
kind of steel products that Africans _need_, if we went this route. IMO,  
that means two steel products for now: (1) steel reinforcing rods for  
cement blocks and slabs used in construction of buildings and roads, and  
(2) steel rails for railroad construction.

     Now comes the hard part. Where are we going to get the money?  
Originally, I said 200 million dollars. Actually that was just a wild  
guess, based on a rumor I heard about the research costs paid out by Nucor  
Steel in inventing the electric-arc furnace mini-mill. I imagine that we  
wouldn't need nearly that much; then again, I don't have a real feel for  
the actual costs involved. Maybe Fred Rozenblad, who lives in the heart of  
steel country, has a better idea. Either way, it'll cost millions, and I  
don't know about you Gabrielle, but _I_ certainly don't have that kind of  
cash stashed away. We could try a couple of the usual suspects, like the  
mainstream banks (I'm sure they'll say no, but we'd have to try them,  
'cause that way at least we'd know), or the Small Business Administration  
(who will laugh in our faces while saying: "You want to do _what_?") OK,  
I'm about ready to throw up my hands. But wait! What about the black-owned  
banks? They might be interested. And hey, a couple of days ago I saw an  
article in the NYT that said something about 15% of black Americans now  
make over $50,000/year (up from 7% in 1967). Some of them might be willing  
to buy one or two thousand dollars in bonds (and even some black folks one  
or two income levels lower), if we could show them that this business had  
a reasonable chance of success. And what about those black kazillionaire  
entertainers? If they can drop hundred of thousands on Shaker furniture  
(Oprah Winfrey) or millions on 19th century Impressionist art (Bill  
Cosby), surely they can afford to _invest_ a few million dollars on a  
truly _productive_ industrial enterprise that will benefit black folks  
here and in Africa. You know, it's conceivable, not likely mind you, but  
still actually conceivable, that the capital for this business could be  
raised.

     Of course, there is one catch to all this. We'd have to move to  
Williamsport, Pennsylvania. Absentee capitalists, like absentee landlords,  
just don't cut it, I'm afraid. :-)   
           

Arthur Johnson
johnson@offroad.chem.wisc.edu