{See front cover} Should an ancient fire-worshipper, reincarnated, return to the contemporary U. S. scene, it is perhaps in a steel-mill that he would find his most congenial employment. For the heart of the steel-mill is the flame of its furnace, and the power of the steel-mill is the heat of that flame. Cold and solid is steel to the layman. Hot and liquid it is to the steelworker, who is essentially one of dozens of cooks attending a titan's kettle of boiling muck. To him, it seems, the fiery mess is continually boiling over from the kettle's snouty spout. First, a trickle of fat sparks. Then the trickle turns to a stream, the stream reaches the circumference of a man's body —a stream of molten steel with a long, sheer drop of 30 feet. The stream thuds into the pit, splashes out in a vast circle, flows like hardening lava across the floor. Should the hypothetical fire-worshipper, unused to these modern manifestations of his fire-god, permit himself to become engulfed in this onrush of liquid metal, he would speedily become one more product of combustion, most readily disposed of by being shoveled back into the furnace to be remelted with the rest of the slag. Yet, though the steel-worker dodges many a flying spark, many a molten stream, the liquid steel does not ordinarily waste itself on the pit floor. When steel-cooks know their business, the brew from the kettle furnace pours not into the pit, but into a many-tonned ladle. Filled to its brim and slobbering over, the ladle is moved along over a train of flatcars in which ingot-molds stand up some seven feet from the car-floors. From mold to mold the ladle hastens, filling each with its white-hot content. When the ladle has gone the length of the train, the row of ingot-molds glow in the darkness like monuments of hardened fire. Thus steel to the steelworker. But to the steel-tycoon, to U. S. business & finance in general, it is gold that melts in the furnace and earnings that spark from the spout. To Hoboken this week went the most potent of steelmen for the annual stockholders' meeting of the most gilded of steel companies. Had all U. S. Steel Corp. stock owners attended, those present would have totaled 100,000. Most, however, stayed at home; all knew that the main business of the meeting was to increase authorized common stock from $753,321,000 to $1,250,000,000 and reduce the preferred from $550,000,000 to $400,000,000. This was accomplished by the unanimous vote of the 200 (representing 2,783,890 shares preferred, 5,515,050 shares common) stockholders present. Thus U. S. Steel's giant capitalization mounted from $1,303,321,000 to $1,650,000,000.
Eagerly awaited was the result of Tuesday's smaller meeting of Steel's potent directors. By night every U. S. broker, most Steel stockholders, knew they could buy, at $140, one new share for every seven shares held. With Steel closing
Tuesday at 184¾, rights were worth exactly $5.59.