This consummation was arrived at about seven years ago and it was then made known that the policy of using profits for building new mills and furnaces or acquiring additional property had been abandoned and that future expansion would be financed by the issuance of bonds, which would permit stockholders to share more liberally in profits than they had in previous years. But although the Corporation, since the new policy was announced, has put more than $400,000,000 into new plant, practically all expenditures for extensions have been from earnings. The war, bringing about a boom in steel, brought to the Corporation such large profits that it was possible to use surplus earnings for extensions and yet pay big dividends to stockholders, making new financing both unnecessary and unwise. At present the Corporation is so strongly entrenched financially that the possibility of borrowing for plant additions becoming necessary has been put into the distant future, possibly eliminated forever. We have seen how the Corporation was formed as a consolidation of ten of the most important steel-producing concerns in the United States, with a combined capacity of nearly two thirds the country’s possible output. So great an operation cannot be considered merely as a matter of finance. The biggest of trusts must of necessity contain enormous potentialities affecting the general welfare of industry and of the State. Its organizers and managers, in consequence, cannot resent fair-minded investigation into the use it makes of its powers. Has the Steel Corporation’s existence been prejudicial to the interests of its competitors, its customers, its employees, or the general public? These questions will be treated in more or less detail in the course of this history, but it might not be out of place to point out a few salient facts on this subject at this point. Since the Corporation began its existence a number of new steel companies have sprung into being, grown and expanded, while the older so-called independents have greatly increased their output. Although the Corporation has added about 13,000,000 tons to its steel-making capacity its competitors have added a still larger amount with the result that the big company now controls less than half the steel production of the United States.[B] [B] See Appendix, page 308.