Steel: Why Not?

This time the steel industry's timing was flawless. President Johnson had just announced his endorsement of a wage increase for the airline machinists. So why shouldn't U.S. corporations, which have long felt inhibited by the guideposts, increase the prices on their products?

First into the field was Chicago-based Inland Steel, the nation's seventh-ranking producer, whose Chairman Joseph Block, 63, was a Kennedy Administration hero for his 1962 part in upholding the guideposts principle. That was when President Kennedy went on television to denounce American steel-men—most particularly U.S. Steel's Roger Blough—as a...