Ostensibly, the Railroad Director based his refusal to place orders for rails and other material required by the roads on the ground that prices were too high. There is little question that he and his associates believed that, by holding off, the steel companies would be forced to reduce prices further to induce railroad buying. The result must have been a severe disappointment, for when the roads did begin to buy, they had to pay, for a substantial part of the tonnage purchased, prices $10.00 a ton or more higher than those agreed on by the Industrial Board, though the Steel Corporation has consistently maintained the Industrial Board prices. As a matter of fact, the end of the war found the whole world starving for steel. For five years steel needed for a million uses of commerce had been diverted to the terrible business of war. And it did not take long for this dammed-up demand to begin to make itself felt. By the early part of October pulses of business were again beating firmly, and by the beginning of 1920 a peace boom had taken the place of the war boom that ended at the close of 1918. For the year 1919 the Corporation, despite the brief depression the steel trade went through, reported earnings of $143,589,062 (after deducting interest and obligations of subsidiary companies), and a balance available for dividends of $76,794,582. Earnings on the common stock were $51,574,905, or the equivalent of $10.20 per share. In the early part of 1920 the steel trade enjoyed a boom that approached that experienced during the war. The world was filling its most pressing requirements of material of which it had been starved while the products of industry were going into munitions and other war needs. Steel prices ascended to the highest levels attained since 1917, although the Corporation maintained the lower levels fixed by the Industrial Board in March, 1919. The closing months of the year, however, witnessed a sharp depression, and at the close of the period the so-called independent companies were operating at a very low rate of capacity with practically no forward orders. The Corporation, because of its price policy earlier in the year, went into 1921 with its order books filled and with operations at fully 90 per cent. of capacity. Earnings of the Corporation for 1920 were $177,126,126 and the net for the junior stock was equivalent to $16.70 a share. Production of steel ingots was approximately 19,278,000 tons and of finished steel 14,233,000 tons.