Steel: Toward October

The best hope for solution to the seven-week-old steel strike lies in the natural pressure of economic forces on the parties involved. But when--and where--will those forces reach impasse-breaking strength? Last week, slowly but inexorably, they began to rise on all sides, starting a steady acceleration that should reach a climax in early October. By then, if the nation's basic industry is still-shuttered up, the alternative to a settlement will be real trouble for the U.S. economy. The key forces:

INDUSTRY. There are only spot shortages. Steel warehouses still have about 3,000,000 tons--just 700,000 tons less than when the strike began--are selling off 175,000 tons a week. The American Steel Warehouse Association checked 20 warehouses last week, found no sweeping nationwide increase in demand. The building industry will start running out of steel in September; so will makers of appliances, farm machinery, ships. Steelmakers have told Cincinnati toolmakers that even if peace comes soon they cannot expect deliveries for three or four months--so long is the waiting list of top-priority defense contractors. Yet steel users stood solidly behind the industry. Said District Manager L. M. Spicer of Los Angeles' Ceco Steel Products Corp.: "This country is going to be out of the steel business if something isn't done to stop spiraling prices. I'm glad the steel industry has finally decided to stand by its guns."

THE WORKERS. Most can hold out another month without pain. Said Cleveland Banker Robert Mazanek: "The steelworkers' way of life today includes a strike every couple of years, and they save for it." Many strikers own houses, are borrowing against them instead of carving into their savings. In some steel towns, only 25% of the strikers applied for free surplus food, and only half of those bothered to pick up their allotments. But other workers are hurting, lining up for state unemployment aid, living off their wives' jobs. Only a handful get emergency help from the United Steelworkers; the union has no national strike war chest. Despite their handicaps, the workers are also determined to see the strike through. Said Earl Bester, boss of 22,000 strikers in the Lake Superior region: "I won't say we're happy, but we're not weakening. We can hold out till spring if we have to."

THE PUBLIC. No previous postwar steel shutdown has been met with such public apathy. But there are warnings that may soon jolt that apathy. Said Chief Economist Beryl W. Sprinkel of Chicago's Harris Trust & Savings Bank: "By Oct. 1, the strike will be a significant depressant on business. If both sides do not reach an accord by then, the Government will have to step in." Last week the Administration repeated that it had no intention of stepping in. The strongest public pressure for a settlement came from 100 steelworkers' wives who, with a bow to the women of Aristophanes' Lysistrata, gathered at a hall in McKeesport, Pa. over their husbands' protests, whipped off angry telegrams demanding that both union and management get cracking in negotiations. Said the women in a resolution: "Let's put an end to all the folderol."

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