STEEL: In Ben's Shoes

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Big Steel's top brass drove out from Pittsburgh last week to the company's most famous plant, Homestead. It is the plant that Andrew Carnegie once owned, and it was the keystone of the great 1901 merger on which U.S. Steel was built. Now, half a century later, Chairman-President Ben Fairless and his aides came to witness another milestone: the pouring of Big Steel's one billionth ton of metal. Never before in world history had one company made as much; it was twice as much as all the mills in Russia had ever made. It was enough to build a 22-ft.-wide bridge around the world seven times.

As Big Steel flexed its muscles, it also shifted its high command. At 62, Chairman and President Ben Fairless was ready to turn over some of his duties to a younger man: Executive Vice President Clifford Hood, 58. Hood has had a big hand in planning and building Big Steel's huge expansion, including the $400 million Fairless works (TIME, Nov. 12, 1951), the biggest steel complex ever built at one time. On Jan. 1, he will take over Big Steel's presidency, though Fairless will still be the chief executive officer, bossing policy while Hood bosses operations.

Hood trained for the top job in typical Big Steel fashion, working up from the mills. After getting his electrical engineer's degree at the University of Illinois ('15), he worked briefly as an operating clerk in the Worcester (Mass.) plant of Big Steel's American Steel & Wire Co. subsidiary, then went off to war as an artillery private (he came back a lieutenant). At war's end, he went back to American Steel & Wire as plant foreman, soon worked up to boss the works. Then, as district operations manager, he piled up such a production record that in 1935 he was moved to Steel & Wire's Cleveland headquarters as vice president, won the top job in 1938. Two years ago, Hood moved up to command of Big Steel's No. 1 subsidiary, Carnegie-Illinois, got his present job a year later.