United States Steel: A Corporation with a SoulCotter, Arundel
History
United States Steel: A Corporation with a Soul
Cotter, Arundel
United States Steel Corporation
During the years of the World War the country’s annual exportations
of iron and steel products were greatly increased as compared with
the largest pre-war year. During the same period the Corporation’s
exports were only slightly increased. The reason for this was that the
Corporation’s operations were largely confined to commercial products
and not to war munitions. Large quantities of steel were, however,
produced and delivered to the government and to government agencies for
use in the manufacture of munitions and for other purposes in carrying
on the war.
Government records show that the exports of the United States in 1900,
the year before the Corporation was organized, were 1,154,284 tons, and
in 1901, 942,689 tons, these figures falling to 372,399 tons in 1902,
and 326,590 tons in 1903. Hence, it has been urged that the immediate
effect of the Corporation’s organization was adverse to exports.
But the government figures include a large number of items such as
subsidiaries of the Corporation do not manufacture, or such as they
do not now export--for instance, many articles manufactured of steel,
and steel scrap. As a matter of fact, the companies merged into the
Corporation exported 291,000 tons of steel products in 1901. In the
following year, the big company shipped more than 300,000 net tons.
To-day the Corporation’s products and agents penetrate into almost
every part of the known globe. Its ships plow nearly every sea. The
goods it sells to the world range all the way from wire nails and watch
springs to the steel frames for great buildings. In Buenos Aires, for
instance, the Corporation maintains its own force of erectors, and
nearly all the big modern buildings of the Argentine capital have had
their skeletons put together by the “Steel Trust” riggers, the men
whom Farrell once described as working with one hand for their job and
holding their lives in the other. The bulk of the steel used in the
construction of the Panama Canal, about 175,000 tons, was supplied by
subsidiaries of the great company.
Some of the principal markets for United States Steel’s surplus output,
with the products they take are: Iceland, wire products and structural
steel; Java, Sumatra, and Borneo, oil piping and galvanized sheets;
India, sheets and wire products; Argentina, structural and merchant
products; South Africa, pipe and light rails for use in diamond
mines; Pacific coast countries of South America, roofing material,
wire, rails, etc.; Patagonia, railway material; Canada and Mexico,
practically every product made; Northern Africa, wire and sheets;
Egypt, wire and cotton ties; Australia, a general line; the countries
formerly comprising the Austrian empire, wire goods and pipe; Syria
and the Holy Land, wire fence, pipe, and small nails used in putting
together date boxes; Rangoon, pipe, nails, fence, and sheets; West
Indies, a general line; Rumania, oil pipe; Central America, a general
line; Greece, pipe, wire, sheets, etc.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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