Steel Makers Favor Disarmament 1921

STEEL AND DISARMAMENT

THE PATH TO DISARMAMENT, they used to tell us, would be blocked by the makers of munitions. Yet we now hear the Gunpowder King of America declaring, as quoted in these pages two weeks ago, that the war business of the DuPont’s does not pay. “I am at the head of the largest war materials manufacturing works in the world, but,” said Charles M. Schwab, the other evening, “gladly would I see the war-making machinery of the Bethlehem Steel Company sunk to the bottom of the ocean,” if the burden of armaments could be lifted from the nations. Judge Gary, of the United States Steel Corporation, declares that disarmament would be a good thing for all business, the steel business included. Leading organs of the iron and steel trade, too, welcome the Hughes program for naval reduction, denying loudly that the continued piling up of armaments is a good thing for the steel business. And the statements from steel men and steel journals are echoed and applauded in the daily papers of New York, Boston and Philadelphia.Â

But since we fight with steel guns, steel bayonets, steel projectiles, and since our battleships are 85% steel and iron, the steel business can not be entirely unaffected by what is going on at Washington, and that unsentimental recorder of values, the New York Stock Exchange, witnessed a drop from one to four points in steel stocks on the first business day after the Hughes announcement. It is explained in the New York Times that the selling of steel shares was based on the belief that the disarmament; plans would compel a readjustment in the industry and would bring lower prices as a result of the release of additional manufacturing capacity for industrial purposes. But steel men were heard to say that while there will be more or less troublesome readjustment, in the long run the industry will benefit, as there is very little profit in armament business; they also called attention to the fact that while the consumption of steel for armament purposes during war is naturally large, such consumption during peace time is of small proportions as compared with the production of steel in general.

Steel and Disarmament continued here…

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