Business: What Price Competition?

Attorney General Herbert Brownell last week reopened the Government's old monopoly case against Aluminum Company of America. He asked New York's federal southern district court to cancel a contract Alcoa made last May with Aluminium Ltd. of Canada, under which Alcoa would buy 600,000 tons of aluminum over the next six years. The contract, argued Brownell, not only violated a 1950 court decision which severed all connection between Alcoa and Alcan, but it would keep new companies from going into the aluminum business because they could not hope to meet Alcan's low price.

Brownell's argument was none too solid. Further expansion of U.S. aluminum production had bogged down long before the Alcoa-Alcan deal. It raised a basic question: Must the U.S. have more competition in the aluminum industry even if it means more expensive aluminum?