Blockade Busting

New York's trustbusting Democrat, Representative Emanuel Celler, buttonholed Mobilization Boss Charles E. Wilson at a dinner party one evening. The U.S. needed more aluminum, said Celler, and wasn't getting it fast enough. Who, he demanded, was to blame? Charlie Wilson answered frankly: if any one man was to blame, it was Manny Celler.

Wilson had good reason for his candid answer. When he decided last winter that the U.S. needed a second boost in aluminum capacity, he wanted to get it from those who had the know-how to supply it --Alcoa, Reynolds and Kaiser, the industry's Big Three. But Celler, who heads a House subcommittee investigating monopolies, objected. The U.S. had just beaten down Alcoa's monopoly, said he; now it was threatened by an "oligarchy" in aluminum. When the Justice Department gravely nodded its head in agreement, the

Interior Department took the hint. It held up approval of fast tax write-offs for further expansion by the Big Three until it could get some newcomers to go into the aluminum business.

Interior interviewed a flock of candidates, but had little luck. Most of the prospects shied away when they found that high construction costs would prevent them from selling aluminum profitably for less than 22-c- a lb., v. the Big Three's price of 18-c- based on equipment built at cheaper costs. Finally, the field was narrowed to one enthusiast. He was Leo M. Harvey, a shrewd Californian who had built up an $8,500,000 aluminum extrusion business, Harvey Machine Co., and already had sewed up a supply of cheap power, the prime essential for aluminum, at Montana's Hungry Horse Dam. Interior agreed that if Harvey could raise $7,000,000, it would approve a $46 million loan for him. When Harvey raised only $3,500,000 and promised to raise the rest by selling stock, Interior asked DPA to make the loan anyway. But last week DPA, in a quandary over Harvey's terms, was not sure it would approve the loan.

Instead, Charlie Wilson, fed up with the delay, prodded out quick tax write-off approval for the expansion plans of the Big Three: an 85,000-ton Texas plant for Alcoa, a 120,000-ton expansion for Kaiser, 20,000 tons of new capacity for Reynolds at Longview, Wash. Total approved expansion for the Big Three since Korea: 545,000 tons. Approved expansion by newcomers: 0. Even Manny Celler and the Justice Department had finally come around to the view that if the U.S. wanted more aluminum fast, it had to go to the people who had the money and experience to produce it fast.

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