Montana labor news., 1932-07-14
STEEL LEADS INDUSTRY INTO NEW BoGs.

The great steel industry is leading American business
down into still lower dregs of business depression.
With the July a holiday, steel fell to a position where
it was operating at IL per cent of capacity. This would
have meant little if it had been temporary, a mere over
the-holiday situation. But observers predicted that it
was the new low level which is to characterize business
for the two summer months-with only a hope that fall
will be better.
The Standard Statistics Company has predicted that
the extreme state of inactivity" which now marks all
industry and business will continue through the summer
months. That extreme state of inactivity will show
up during August in figures which will break all-time
records of low rates of production, it is / believed.
During the last Is months the New York Times index
has gone up just Is weeks-the other so weeks it has
dropped, of course, with the result that the rate of bust
ness operations has fallen from 80 per cent of normal
l5 months ago to less than IS per cent.
This has been reflected in the stock market, with all
the significance that market has to the whole credit
structure. The price of 80 stocks in Wall Streets biggest
gambling den of the world hit an average price early in
July which was exactly half of the top price for the pre-
vious six months. That is, the prices of these 80 import
ant stocks had fallen a half during the fifth ~half-year
period of the present panic.
The eyes of Pittsburgh observers of stock market ma
nipulations are turned to July % when the board of u. S.
Steel will pass on the dividend for Steel Preferred. This
stock has been kept on at its regular rate of per cent
although it has fallen in price to around 81 1t was looked
on as most gilded of gilt-edge securities a brief year ago
because of all the war profits still held in undivided sur
plus by the corporation.
Now there is less faith but many more shivers of fear
as to what will happen to the banking system if the di-
rectors turn thumbs down on the dividend. 1t is widely
predicted they will do just that. Control of the steel
trust would cost less than 100 millions at present stock
market values, incidentally; control, that is, of some 430
millions of quick assets (150 millions CASH and a plant
valued at 81 ,75O, 900, 900. There is probably no point
at all to pointing out that these 100 millions would be
but 5 per cent of the Reconstruction Finance Corpora
TONS two billion dollar loan fund.
These figures of tagging industry and ~ per cent of
capacity" are quickly translated into human suffering.
The steel industry is one of Americas greatest. There
were about SIT, 900 industrial workers and $4,000 cler-
ical workers engaged in iron and steel making when the
industry was working at capacity. There is no way to
measure the suffering caused by the catastrophe in steel.
One can coldly figure that an SO per cent drop would
have meant the complete Wiping out of some 584,76 0
jobs if the remaining workers had been kept on at full
time-and few earned more than a mere living at full
time. But this hasn't happened. Suffering has been
spread more widely than that. Wage cuts and the stag
ger system have been effective distributors of human
misery. Nor do these figures tell the story half as eff
fectively as the hungry wall Of one tiny baby in one
single family among the whole 627 900 workers.
There is some bitter hope in that it would seem that
industry cannot get much worse without total collapse.
The squeeze on the workers will some time get unbear-
able as steel workers showed in Chicago when they at
tackled a relief depot. Possible profits in the stock mar
kt by smashing prices would seem to have reached a
limit One of the indications that the suckers are in
the market in a big way is the amount Of money "loaned
to brokers'" OF the eight and one-half billions so loaned
in September 1929, 8 and o%nefourth billions have been
squeezed out.
Until November, steels hungry millions will be pawns
OF political moves, and hunger will be a factor cOldly
played by the Hoover and Roosevelt forces. Starvation
will be dealt to this group or temporarily withheld from
that as it pleases the players at the economic-p political
chessboard. Unless, of course, the -workers-perhaps the
steel workers-decide to tip the kings, the queens, the
bishops and the knights off the chessboard.
ELECT YOUR FRIENDS.
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