Steel: Resurgence in Bunyan Country

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Lift in Output. The two trends together have touched off the greatest migration and building program in the steel industry's 101-year history. U.S. Steel and Inland, both longtime Chicago producers, have major expansion programs under way to add furnaces and finishing mills. Jones & Laughlin will erect a ground-up $600 million plant at Hennepin, 111. (TIME, July 9). Bethlehem is spending $400 million on a 3,300-acre complex of finishing mills at Burns Harbor, Ind. Youngstown Sheet & Tube is laying out $375 million for a blast furnace and finishing mills at East Chicago, and Midwest Steel, a division of National Steel, has opened a new $115 million plant.

Because of the lift in steel output and orders, employment and construction in the Chicago area are rising. Last week the state of Indiana sought first bids for a new port at Burns Harbor that will cost about $100 million, will handle ore boats carrying iron ore from the Mesabi and from similar mines in Upper Michigan. The Burlington Lines railroad recently decided to add 100 covered gondola cars to carry finished steel, later revised the total upward to 200 because of the rising volume of traffic. The New York Central System is planning to build a 4,100-car marshaling yard near the new mills, is shifting three miles of the Central's New York-Chicago main line in the process. So strong is the future that Chicagoans have adopted a somewhat condescending attitude toward Pittsburgh. "In steel," says Inland's Vice President William Caples, "this is where the action is."