Aluminum

The Aluminum Co. of America was again, last week, charged with being a monopoly. Last "year the Department of Justice investigated such charges and exonerated the company. This result displeased many members of the Senate. But, although the Senate Judiciary Committee found many points to censure in the company's methods, the Senate as a whole exculpated it of illegal tactics. This was last February.

In mid-summer the Federal Trade Commission was to make its own investigation of the supposed monopoly. But it postponed inquiry until Sept. 29, at Pittsburgh.

Meanwhile the wrath of Manufacturer George D. Haskell (Bausch Machine & Tool Co.) of Springfield, Mass., has grown mighty. Years ago he decided that the Aluminum Co. of America was monopolizing a highly profitable business. So, with the intention of intruding and at the expense of much time, pains and money, he learned that the Aluminum Co. controlled the great U. S. deposits of bauxite, the commercial ore from which aluminum is extracted. These deposits are in Alabama, Tennessee, Georgia, Arkansas. The Aluminum Co. also controls the great bauxite deposits of British and Dutch Guiana, and buys up much of the French red bauxite. Manufacturer Haskell located other deposits, until then unknown to the Aluminum Co.

The next problem was to find cheat) electric power. This, it happened, was easy. Tobacco-man James B. Duke (died last October) was just completing in 1924 the huge waterpower development on the Saguenay River in Canada. His plant cost $40,000,000. It would generate 600,000 horsepower of electricity a year and do it so cheaply that current could be sold for $12 per one horsepower per year. At this rate bauxite could be hauled to the Saguenay, be reduced in electric furnaces to aluminum, and the aluminum worked into industrial shapes and household utensils with vast profits. Manufacturer Haskell told his plans to Power-maker Duke. He presumed that the $1,000,000 Quebec Co. Ltd., which Mr. Duke organized, would carry out their joint venture, would be the great competitor of the Aluminum Co. of America. But Mr. Duke saw greater gains for himself from dealing with the Aluminum Co. He traded his hydro-electric developments and rights for Aluminum Co. interests. He became a director of the latter. Manufacturer Haskell was left alone with his plans--and his wrath. He has pending in Boston courts a suit against the Aluminum Co. for $15,000,000 damages. Last week, still wroth, he filed another suit in Manhattan. If monopoly, in the sense established by the Sherman Anti-Trust law, is proved against a corporation such as the Aluminum Co. of America, the plaintiff is entitled to three times the damages which he can prove he suffered. Mr. Haskell now asks for $45,000,000.