Labor: To the Brink in Steel

As Pittsburgh's steel industry talks moved toward this week's strike dead line, it was apparent that the results, for once, would have little immediate effect on the economy. A strike would lay off 450,000 men and idle the nation's most important basic industry—but probably not for long, since President Johnson would almost certainly ask for an in junction under the Taft-Hartley law to keep the mills rolling. Even with a settlement, however, production is sure to tumble sharply as steel customers work off the record 14 million-ton stockpile that they have accumulated...