England's Steel, Morgan's Steel

To the British steel industry came last week a series of mergers, from which may result the formation of a British steel cartel to meet foreign competition in world markets. First came a triple merger involving three British steel makers (Vickers, Vickers-Armstrong, and Cammell, Laird & Co.) who united all their interests, except their armament works, in a company to be called the English Steel Corp., Ltd. Capital: about $100,000,000. Then came another merger--the union of Dorman Long, Ltd. with Bolckow Vaughan & Co., Ltd. Capital also about $100,000,000. An export agreement has been concluded and an effort will be made to secure a protective tariff on steel.

Capitalizations of $100,000,000 may represent huge companies in British steel, but U. S. citizens point to the "billion dollar" U. S. Steel Corp. as the real standard of steel magnitude. Whether because of its association with such names as Carnegie,

Gary, Morgan, or because it was a "billion dollar" corporation in days when such corporations were objects of more awe and alarm than they are today, U. S. Steel remains as it has been for many years, the popular embodiment of U. S. capital, U. S. industry. When U. S. Steel directors meet, there is news; when they elect directors, it is an event. Thus the U. S. public was last week more interested in the election of two new U. S. Steel directors than in British steel mergers, however far-reaching.

The two new directors are Junius Spencer Morgan Jr. and Walter Sherman Gifford. Junius Spencer Morgan Jr. is named for his great-grandfather, the Junius Spencer Morgan who in 1854 left the Boston dry goods field to become a partner in the London bank of George Peabody & Co. It was this Junius Spencer Morgan (not John Pierpont Morgan I) who originated the famed remark that "Any one who sells a bear on the United States will go broke." The present Junius Spencer Morgan Jr. was graduated from Harvard in 1914, is a Morgan partner, a director of General Motors, grandson of the late great John Pierpont Morgan who was largely responsible for the formation of U. S. Steel in 1901, and son of the John Pierpont Morgan who is now Chairman of the U. S. Steel Board. The appointment of Morgan Partner Thomas William Lamont to the U. S. Steel Finance Committee, last week, further italicized the Morgan sense of responsibility for U. S. Steel and gave rise to rumors that Mr. Lamont might succeed Mr. Morgan to the board chairmanship.*

No Morgan Partner, no banker, is Walter Sherman Gifford, president of American Telephone & Telegraph, now U. S. Steel Director. Mr. Gifford began his commercial career clerking for the Western Electric Co. at $10 weekly. It is said that he had intended to send the letter of application which got him the job to the General Electric Co., confused the two Electrics, thus accidentally landed with the Western. His work attracted the attention of Theodore N. Vail, who made him chief statistician. By 1915 he was Vice President; in 1917, as head of the Council of National Defense, he directed the purchase of supplies for the American Expeditionary Forces in France; in 1918 he returned to the A. T. & T.; in 1925 was made A. T. & T. president. Among the many innovations credited to Mr. Gifford is the now familiar "night letter" telegraphic service. Mr. Gifford, 44, is still young, as presidents, as directors, go; and has an operating rather than a financial background. Interests he represents, however, have large U. S. Steel holdings.

* When John Pierpont Morgan was made chairman of the U. S. Steel Board, in December, 1927, following Judge Gary's death, in August 1927, he was the leading figure in a triumvirate which controlled U. S. Steel.

The other triumvirs were President James Augustine Farrell and Finance Committee Chairman Myron Charles Taylor (TIME, Jan. 9, 1928). It was said that Mr. Morgan at that time regarded his appointment as temporary and hoped that a successor would soon be found.