The Economy: Now, Only a Murmur

The steel melodrama of 1963 started out like a familiar scene in a western movie: an embattled cowboy raising a hat on a stick to see if the foe fires at it.

This year the hostiles did not fire—and other cowboys suddenly felt free to poke up their heads.

The hombre with the hat was the Wheeling Steel Corp., the industry's tenth biggest producer, which was the first to announce price hikes in several categories of steel (TIME, April 19). One year earlier, the steel industry's ill-timed effort to raise prices had drawn a furious fusillade from the New Frontier. But...