MANUFACTURING: Finest Yet

• Share

Out of Manhattan one day last week slid a special train full of U. S. Steel Corp. bigwigs. Hero of the day was six-foot, grey-thatched William Adolf Irvin, onetime president. The train was named the "Irvin Works Special" and it was chuffing toward Pittsburgh (as were specials from Chicago and Cleveland) for the inauguration of Big Steel's Irvin Works, "finest mill man yet has built."

Masterpiece of the $642,000,000 expansion and modernization program initiated by former Chairman Myron Taylor in 1928, the Irvin Works cost around $45,000,000, were built in 19 months, have 51 acres under roof. Located atop a hill to avoid floods, the plant will employ 3,750 men at capacity, whisk steel from slab to sheet at a speed of 20 m.p.h. Last week's celebration dealt largely with these marvels, barely touched upon the wider significance of the Irvin Works to the Steel Industry.

Fortnight ago Chairman Alfred P. Sloan Jr. of General Motors Corp. told a Senate committee that "America's production plant is obsolete," that industry should be stimulated to substitute new machines for old, thus increase production and lower prices (TIME, Dec. 19). But outright expansion, rather than improvement, is industry's usual objective. When consumer demand rises, new plants are built to increase production; then recession nips demand and the new plants are not needed. In the case of the Irvin Works, Big Steel was operating at around 90% of capacity when it broke ground in May 1937; last week steel production was dawdling at 58% and full-scale operation of the Irvin Works would mean the shutting down of other Big Steel plants.

No U. S. Steel official last week would admit to such plans. But the town of Martin's Ferry, Ohio was so worried about its 1,600-man plant that it appealed to Secretary of Labor Frances Perkins. Four other Big Steel plants (in Monessen and New Castle, Pa., Elwood, Ind., Cambridge, Ohio) have lately closed.