The self-styled protector of small stockholders at corporate meetings is Xanthippe-tongued Wilma Porter Soss, fiftyish, who once showed up at a U.S. Steel meeting in a 1901 puffed-sleeve dress and ostrich-plumed hat appropriate, she said, for a management "50 years behind in its stockholder relations." With little stock (e.g., ten shares of U.S. Steel worth $831.25) but big ideas and a thirst for publicity, she has for a decade harassed U.S. Steel and other corporations, with small success.
Last week U.S. Steel was forced to go along with a pet Soss project. On proxy ballots mailed out for the annual...