After pondering the bids submitted for the $190,000,000 Geneva Steel plant, the War Assets Administration last week decided to sell it to U.S. Steel Corp. Big Steel, which operated Geneva during the war, had offered to pay $47,500,000, spend another $18,600,000 to convert the plant to manufacture types of steel needed by steel-hungry West Coast industries (TIME, May 13). It has also promised to spend $25,000,000 for a new California fabricating plant.
WAA agreed with West Coast industrialists that selling to Big Steel offered "the highest possible degree of assurance for the continued operation of the plant." WAA brushed off the...