The Other Aluminum Company

Four years ago the U. S. Government, on the grounds that Aluminum Co. of America is a monopoly, started an antitrust suit that has yet to be decided. Last year the Government took a more direct route to the same end. Its RFC loaned smart little Reynolds Metals Co. $15,800,000 to build its own aluminum ingot plant (in Alabama) to compete with Alcoa. Month ago RFC advanced another $4,200,000 to Reynolds, to help with a Bonneville plant. Last week Reynolds Metals put out its 1940 report, proof that Alcoa's competitor was growing fast. Its 1940 sales were a record $29,158,000, up 42% from 1939. Net earnings were $2,428,000 v. $1,527,000 in 1939. Once wholly dependent upon Alcoa's aluminum, Reynolds Metals is now feeling its oats. This week its president blasted blanket priorities: ". . . If enforced . . . without reasonable notice to the trade, only the Aluminum Company of America stands to profit."

Boss of Reynolds Metals is chunky, thin-haired, alert Richard Samuel Reynolds, nephew of the founder of R. J Reynolds Tobacco Co. He quit the tobacco business in 1912, puttered around for seven years before starting a company to make cigaret foil. Effervescent Richard Reynolds likes to compose poetry while shaving, is now writing a book "to keep sane." Often he lets his enthusiasm overtake his business acumen, once bought the white elephant Woolworth estate on Long Island. But Reynolds Metals blossomed. He revolutionized the packaging business, won prizes with Canada Dry and Hoffman Beverage labels, made Reynolds Metals tops in the foil-making field.

When World War II broke, Promoter Reynolds was convinced that there would be an aluminum shortage. Eleven months later he got his first RFC loan, now translated into a 40,000,000-lb. plant at Lister Ala., which will start reducing bauxite (aluminum ore) next week. Reynolds also is starting on a 60,000,000-lb. plant in the lumbermill town of Longview, Wash., where Bonneville will furnish power aplenty. Now Reynolds is confident that his 100,000,000-lb. output (by next July) plus Alcoa's 690,000,000 will take care of defense needs, adds: "We do not share the sudden and surprising hysteria as to an acute shortage."

In two years the U. S. Government has given Reynolds a helping hand to the tune of $38,000,000, enabled him to build six new plants and establish a mining company. But Government help did not end there. Last week razor-tongued Interior Secretary Ickes turned thumbs down on Alcoa's plea for enough Bonneville power to operate a new plant in the Vancouver area. Quacked Ickes: "I am merely following the letter of the law."* But the power will go to Reynolds instead.

*The law says Bonneville power must be sold to states and municipalities in preference to corporations, and that Federal projects cannot foster monopolies.

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