By Hatfield-McCoy standards, there was too much talk and not anywhere near enough damage. But nobody could accuse Henry Kaiser and Republic Steel's President Charles M. White of not trying. Kaiser, in a surprise deal with War Assets Administrator Jess Larson, had snatched the Government's $28 million Cleveland blast furnace from under White's nose (TIME, Aug. 30); last week, when Senator Kenneth Wherry's Small Business Committee looked into that deal, the feud was out in the open.
Kaiser charged that White had "tried to blackjack the Government" into letting Republic have the plant dirt-cheap. He told how once, on...