For the period 1913–1919 alone the Steel Corporation piled up a total undivided surplus of $2,239,986,569.84. In the years 1917–1922, its average margin of safety, that is, the proportion of available surplus or net revenue left over after fixed charges have been provided for, was almost 73 per cent. During this period it earned on preferred stock an average of 28.89 per cent and on common an average of 15.51 per cent. On Dec. 31, 1921, the Steel Corporation was christened the giant of super-trusts with a property account of $1,631,579,260. Though there was some depression during this year, the gross sales and earnings of the company reached the huge sum of $1,092,697,772.
This pace of growth is being excelled in 1923. In the first six months of the year the Steel Corporation has piled up a net profit close to $85,000,000! And production is breaking all previous records.
To this heart-breaking poverty of the Steel Trust add the petty sum of $75,000,000 annually taken by it from the farmers thru the vicious Pittsburgh Plus system.
Steel Trust Heavily Subsidized by The Government
Yet, let us go even further than we have gone—hypothetically, at least, since it is impossible to do so arithmetically. Suppose that the Steel Trust is still too poor to pay the assumed increase in the cost of production. Then, let us turn to another comer and find another source of fabulous income flowing into the bottomless coffers of the Steel Trust's deposit vault.
Pursuing its policy of subsidizing the powerful bankers and manufacturers, the United States Government, through the Fordney-McCumber Tariff Act, is donating to the makers of heavy steel products outright gifts running into hundreds of millions of dollars. Analyzing these huge bonuses granted to the Steel Magnates, the latest Report of the Fair Tariff League shows that:
"The duties given in the Fordney law embargoes importations. They carelessly offer to the makers of heavy steel products, pig iron, cast and wrought iron pipe, structural iron, tinplate and ternaplate, bar steel, steel rails, wire and wire work, $351,000,000, which sum will be doubled to consumers, making about $702,000,000 to be paid partly in the direct cost of highly finished products like automobiles and machinery, and the balance in amortization charges. …
"To the above $720,000,000 of protection on heavy steel products would be added a possible $1,580,000,000 on only 21 of the many highly finished steel products upon which the government would collect only $5,603,907 or $1 against $282 it made the public liable for."
Conclusions
Under all of these circumstances analyzed it is obvious even to
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