BROKEN HILL CO.

Grey River Argus, 19 July 1941, Page 4

BROKEN HILL CO.

Chairman’s Case AGAINST STATE CONTROL. (Rec. 1.10). MELBOURNE, July IS. The Chairman of the Broken Hill Proprietary 7 Comanv ’Limited, Mr H. G. Darling, has issued a statement on behalf of the Company repudiating the charges of profiteering made by Mr Frank Forde, Deputy-Leader of the Commonwealth Parliamentary Labour Party, as cabled on Wednesday. He pointed out that the prices of iron and steel in Australia nad not been increased since early in 1938. while, since the outbreak of war, the Company had spent more than half a million pounds on buildings and tools for defence purposes, in addition to which the Company was spending one a-half millions on plant essential to the war effort, and which, if ordinary commercial conditions obtained, would not have been installed. The Company had given just and generous treatment to its thousands of employees, and had adhered strictly to all awards. Mr Darling compared the Company’s current prices per ton with those in Britain, disclosing that Australian pig iron, merchant bars, structural steel, and plates were approximately half the cost of similar British products.