Lukens Goes to Town

Coatesville, Pa. is a quiet little town of narrow streets, dozens of musty, old-fashioned saloons and only one real claim to fame: Lukens Steel Co., a small, smart, fast-growing outfit which is now one of the largest U.S. makers of armor plate. Last week Lukens announced it had quadrupled plate output in the year ended Oct. 10, turned out enough armor for a dozen warships (battleships, cruisers, carriers) and hundreds of army tanks to boot.

The Woman. Second oldest U.S. steel maker (oldest: Taylor-Wharton at High Bridge, N.J.), Lukens was founded in 1810. Badly located for raw materials, it limped along until 1825, when upholstered, ambitious, 3O-year-old Rebecca Lukens inherited the business, became the first big-time U.S. female executive (see cut). Rebecca read steel cost sheets by sunlight and Shakespeare by candlelight, in 22 years won fame & fortune for herself and Lu kens. When she died in 1847, the business went to Son-in-law Dr. Charles Huston, whose descendants still own 37% of the company.

Run by peace-loving Quakers, Lukens refused all war orders for more than a century, changed its policy only after the U.S. got into World War I. Then it was too late -- the company finished the world's largest rolling mill (206 in. wide; cost $5,000,000) just in time for the Armistice and a terrible slump in steel orders.

The Man. On to this scene came balding, chunky, nervous-quick Robert Wilson Wolcott, 50, who took a swing in the Navy and Bethlehem Steel, worked up to be Lukens' president six years after he mar ried a Huston girl. As the big boss Wolcott began to: 1) specialize in oversized hot rolled plates, 2) set up fabricating subsidiaries to give Lukens a broader market. Both schemes clicked and the huge 206-in. mill was soon thundering out big plates for merchant ships, machine tools, railroad equipment, etc., the fabricating divisions prospered on special castings, all-welded cylinder blocks, etc.

When war broke out Lukens was a natural--for one thing its big mill could roll plates twice as thick and 40 in. wider than anyone else. So the Navy placed orders for battleship armor up to 9 1/2 in. thick, welded marine-engine blocks and submarine parts; the Army ordered light tank armor, antiaircraft gun bases, other fabricated steel parts. To boost output faster Defense Plant Corp. okayed a $25,000,000 plant expansion (total plant in 1940: $8,385,000). Result: in 1939-42 Lukens almost tripled employment to 6,000, quadrupled sales to $47,000,000, multiplied net profits almost 20 times to roughly $1,500,000--a record no big U.S. steelmaker can touch.

Even so, cautious, farsighted Robert Wolcott is not a happy man--he knows that Lukens' plate sales are 100% munitions, will nose-dive at war's end. The white hope: the fabricating divisions, which now account for almost 40% of total sales, are big enough to make Lukens a husky manufacturer of peacetime products.

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