A strike of the nation's 650,000 United Steelworkers (C.I.O.) seemed so inevitable that mills had begun banking their furnaces when the Wage Stabilization Board sat down in Washington one evening last week for a final, desperate attempt at mediation. At dawn, the chairman, Nathan P. Feinsinger, 49, a University of Wisconsin law professor, fainted from exhaustion. The board recessed until evening. At 9:30, just 74½ hours before the strike deadline, its twelve haggard members emerged with a majority recommendation.
Its terms, as Feinsinger explained them, would grant the union wage and fringe benefits, such as paid holidays, which would eventually cost...
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