_Second_──The price of steel has not been increased; on the contrary, it has been greatly reduced under its management. Thirty years ago a very indifferent quality of machine steel cost from 8 to 12 cents per pound. To─day ordinary machine steel of a much better quality than that mentioned above can be had for 2 cents a pound or less. _Third_──The wages of workmen have not only not been reduced, but have actually been doubled since the labor troubles in the steel mills known as the "Homestead Strike" (1892). The Steel Corporation has gone much further than to double the wages of the steel workers. They have made it possible for the workmen to become partners in the great work of the corporation, by obligating themselves to sell to their workmen a certain amount each year of stock in the corporation, so that the men who labor in the mills may also become part owners and participate in the dividends resulting from their work on exactly the same percentage as the capitalist himself does. Our critic comes back to the charge by saying that "the Steel Corporation has bought up many steel plants in various parts of the country, and added them to its already enormous properties." Quite true. And for what purpose? Let us see what they do with these plants. How do they manage this part of the business? What is their plan of working? The conditions were these: Before the advent of the United States Steel Corporation, there were many isolated steel manufacturing plants, each being equipped for the making of a number of kinds of steel products──for instance, steel railroad rails, structural steel, merchant bar steel, steel boiler─plates, steel tank─plates, and so on. The equipment necessary for producing these different forms of steel was very expensive; and inasmuch as a considerable portion of this equipment for some particular kind of product would necessarily be idle on account of the fluctuations of trade, the expense burden was abnormally high on account of this idle equipment. How has this condition been handled by the Steel Corporation? This has been the plan: Suppose they have purchased five plants, each making the five classes of product indicated above, and working under the disadvantages of a variety of products. These plants are examined, and inventories made of their equipments. It is then decided which mill is best adapted for making each one of the five classes of products. Then there is a redistribution of the equipment of the plants, placing in the plant selected for it all that in the several plants is adapted to a certain product; removing all the machinery from this plant that is not adapted to the particular product to be turned out, to be distributed among the other plants according to the particular class of products for which each one is designed. Thus each plant is equipped to turn out the single class of product which