Business & Finance: Pittsburgh Minus

The trouble with "gentlemen's agreements" to stabilize prices, according to the industrial engineering firm of Ford, Bacon & Davis, is that 60% of the agreers are gentlemen, 30% just act like gentlemen and 10% neither are nor act like gentlemen. Result in the early years of the steel industry was that every price pool ended in price chaos. Then along came a gentleman who also carried a big stickĀ—stern Judge Gary of U. S. Steel Corp. Since Big Steel at the turn of the Century had 65% of the total ingot-steel capacity, Judge Gary...

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