Steel Inquiry After Price Retreat

Press, Volume CI, Issue 29799, 16 April 1962, Page 13

Steel Inquiry After Price Retreat

(N.Z. Press Association-Copyright.) WASHINGTON, April 14. The United States Congress continued anti-monopoly investigations today in spite of the American steel industry’s retreat on price increases.

A Senate anti-trust subcommittee, headed by Senator Estes Kefauver, a Democrat. issued subpoenaes for figures on production costs of 12 United States steel firms, including firms which did not raise their prices, the Associated Press reported. Senator Albert Gore (Democrat. Tennessee), prepared to introduce in the Senate on Monday three bills he said were “designed to protect the public interest against unjustified prices and profits in monopoly-con-trolled industries.”

“This whole episode in which the steel companies made almost uniform price increases and then rescinded them demonstrates the need for additional machinery to protect the public interest in the future.” Senator Gore said. The steel firms' retreat in the face of strong White House pressure, was completed today when Wheeling Steel rescinded its posted price increases.

The retreat started yesterday afternoon, when Bethlehem Steel, America’s number two producer, announced it would cancel the higher prices it had made effective the previous day. A few hours later United States Steel rescinded its increase, and the lesser producers then followed.

President Kennedy, who denounced the original increase of six dollars a ton. marshalled the full force of his Administration to bring about the companies’ retreat.

“The people of the United States,” he said, “are most gratified . . In one of the bills which Senator Gore has drafted, he proposed to give the President authority under the Taft-Hartley Aqt to call for

an 80-day “cooling-off” period when any general price increase in steel or other basic commodities was threatened. This would be similar to Presidential authority to halt certain types of strikes, A.P. said.