Steel

Last month shares of 225 U. S. corporations added $1,644,155,875 to their market value. They scored their seventh consecutive monthly advance and stood at their highest point since the summer of 1931. Backbone of the market rise was an increase in corporate earnings, 220 corporations with nine-month 1935 reports showing a 25 1/3% increase over 1934.

Most significant progress was made by the steel industry which, after losing nearly $19,000,000 in 1934, will make a substantial 1935 profit. With operations up to 54 1/2 % of capacity, eleven steel companies reporting for nine months of 1935 showed profits of about $28,000,000 compared to a $7,500,000 deficit in the same 1934 period. Booming automobiles have boomed steel. Also important is the increased production going into several thousand miscellaneous uses from ash cans to architectural ornaments.

U. S. Steel held its third-quarter loss to $1,305,000 against nearly $10,000,000 in the corresponding 1934 period. It has started a $140,000,000 plant improvement campaign, but an improvement in railroad and heavy structural steels would be more valuable from the standpoint of immediate profits.

Bethlehem Steel made $1,895,000 for nine months in 1935, against $139,000 in 1934-Republic Steel produced steel's Man-of-the-Year in Tom Mercer Girdler. who last September absorbed Corrigan. McKinney and Truscon Steel, increased Republic's yearly capacity to 6,000,000 tons. Mr. Girdler got himself a Cleveland steel plant and large ore reserves, but neither of his acquisitions has been making any money and the merger involved a large increase in Republic capitalization. But Republic made $3,264,000 in nine months of 1935 against a 1934 loss of $2,193,000 and Mr. Girdler appears to have expanded at just the time when steel mills are becoming assets instead of liabilities.

National Steel, only major outfit to make money throughout Depression, again ranked as No. 1 earner with a nine-month profit of $8,603,000, nearly doubling the earnings of the 1934 period. With business concentrated on steel's most profitable items, National is a boom-time merger that Depression has not withered.

Inland Steel ranks next to National as a Depression earner. Its nine-month profit for 1935 came to $6,668,000, more than twice the earnings of the same 1934 period.

Youngstown Sheet & Tube had a fine business with oil and gas companies in the boom days of pipe-line construction, but its sheet division is now more prosperous. Youngstown's 1931-34 deficits came to $31,000,000. After losing money in the first half of 1935, Youngstown made $575,000 in the third quarter, squeezed out a nine-month profit of $104,000 against a $1,669,000 loss in 1934.

American Rolling Mill last month paid its first dividend since January 1931. For nine months of 1935 it made nearly $3,000,000, about doubling its 1934 earnings. Almost 85% of its capacity is in sheets, sold to the makers of automobiles, electric refrigerators, electrical transformers, stoves.

Other good steel earners of the first three quarters include Wheeling ($2,251,000), Otis ($1,360,000), and Allegheny ($747,000). Jones & Langhlin, along with U. S. Steel, is still in the red, but a third-quarter profit of $234,000 cut the nine-month deficit to $516,000 and made the steel industry a practically unanimous profitmaker on current operations.

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