Steel War (cont.)

Mr Schwab forgot, but Mr. Grace simply would not tell. Each sat in the smart, new conference room of Lawyers Cotton, Franklin, Wright & Gordon at No. 63 Wall Street. There also sat Col. Grayson Mallet-Prevost Murphy, broker, director of Bethlehem Steel Corp., and there, for the moment, reposed the hopes of Cyrus Stephen Eaton, still waging bitter war against the merger of Bethlehem Steel with Youngstown Sheet & Tube.

What Mr. Schwab forgot, until Mr. Eaton's bright lawyers reminded him, was something which few men could forget.

To wit: that for the space of one year he had been Bethlehem's president. Now, of course, he is internationally famed as Bethlehem's genial, talkative chairman. What Mr. Grace, who is now Bethlehem's president, would not tell, was the size of his, Mr. Grace's, salary. In Youngstown, only the day before, a new petition had charged that this salary exceeded $1,000,000 annually, "for which," the petition added, "he renders no adequate service or consideration." Never before had such things been said of the man whom Colyumist Arthur Brisbane immediately characterized as "one of the ablest steel men living."

Both Colyumist Brisbane and breezy, able John F. Sinclair of the New York World ignored the merger battle, focused upon the issue of whether any executive is worth a million a year. Said Mr. Brisbane, uncompromisingly: "A civilization that can afford to pay $250,000 a year salary for a few minutes talk on the radio can afford $1,000,000 for running a big steel concern." But Writer Sinclair quoted the late, great Nicholas F. Brady: "No employe of a well-run corporation can possibly be worth in salary over $100,000 a year."

Col. Murphy neither forgot, nor refused to tell, this news of the great Steel War: That at a dinner at New York's exclusive Links Clubs, last March, attended by himself, Mr. Schwab, Mr. Grace and many another promerger leader the plans were made for the purchase of Sheet & Tube stock through Mr. Murphy's brokerage house (G. M. P. Murphy & Co.). Many a legal objection to the deal is based on the extent and nature of stock-buying by promerger forces before the stockholders' meeting (TIME, April 21). More significant than the question of the $1,000,000 salary, this testimony will feature the opening of Mr. Eaton's latest suit to enjoin the merger, in Youngstown, next week.

This file is automatically generated by a robot program, so reader's discretion is required.