United States Steel: A Corporation with a Soul

by Arundel Cotter

Perhaps the most interesting single feature of the Corporation’s war activities was the contract which it undertook early in May, 1918, to erect for the Government the largest big gun plant in the world on Neville Island, in the Ohio River, near Pittsburgh. This plant was to have a capacity to forge fifteen 14-inch guns, and to machine and finish twelve a month. Part of its capacity was to be devoted to the manufacture of even larger cannon—up to 18-inch.

The estimated cost of the plant and equipment was $150,000,000, this figure not including the cost of the guns.

To the fulfillment of this enormous contract the Corporation bent a great part of its energies. And for its work and the work of its officers it agreed to accept an annual remuneration of one dollar—since neither individual nor corporation can make Uncle Sam a present of his services. So the United States Steel Corporation was one of a few, a very few, companies which may be reckoned among the dollar-a-year war workers of the United States.

The Neville Island plant was, as has been said, to have been the largest big-gun plant in the United States. The plans called for a complete integration of operations including the erection of a big steel plant to supply the necessary raw material. The site chosen was an excellent one for the purpose, being located well toward the centre of the country with all-water transportation to the Gulf of Mexico and rail connections with every part of the United States. Besides the manufacture of big guns the Neville Island plant was to be equipped to make 40,000 shells, of 8-inch and larger sizes, a month.

Immediately upon the signing of the contract the Steel Corporation set about the erection of the plant. Ground was broken and a number of buildings of various kinds erected. But the construction of the giant plant was necessarily a question of time. It is doubtful if, under the most favorable conditions, it would have been possible to begin operations until well into 1919 or to turn out a single gun until the beginning of 1920, and the armistice intervened on November 11, 1918, this causing the cessation of the work. The huge project, it might be said, died before it was fully born. Such equipment as had already been placed was moved to government arsenals elsewhere and the buildings dismantled. And the war history of Neville Island came to an end. What work was done, and property purchased on the final settlement, cost the Government something like $11,000,000.

The abandonment of the project seems a pity. True, the winning of the war seemed to make the plant unnecessary, but, in view of the excellent location of the island for an arsenal, its position in juxtaposition to Pittsburgh, the great steel centre, and the work actually done and expenditures already made, it might be held that it would have been better to continue the work at least sufficiently to give the Government a small plant which could be expanded if need ever arose again, a nucleus for a great-gun factory in the event of another war. This could have been done at a comparatively small additional cost. But, as Kipling says, that’s another story.

Of all the needs of the Allies and the United States in the summer of 1917 none was quite as urgent as ocean tonnage. The Hun U-boats at that time were sinking ships and cargoes at a rate that the governments concerned did not even dare to make public. The number of bottoms operated by the Allies was being sadly depleted, and without ships England faced something very like starvation; men, munitions, and food supplies could not have been sent to the front. On the speed with which the shipyards of this country and Great Britain could turn out steamers depended, more than upon any other factor at the time, the victory or defeat of the Allied arms.

How the United States met the emergency is a matter of history. The fabricated ship was evolved and made a success. To secure vessels, the Government placed contracts under which it stood the entire expense of plant construction with payment for the vessels on a cost-and-percentage basis. But the Steel Corporation, although it probably could have secured similar terms, chose rather to build and equip yards at its own expense, relieving the Government of this expense. Two shipyards were started, one at Kearny, N. J., and the other at Chickasaw, near Mobile, Ala.

Shipbuilding, of course, may be regarded largely as a commercial venture on the part of the Corporation. But it is certain that it is a venture that it would never have undertaken at the time, because of the immense building cost then obtaining and the future uncertainties, had it not been for the urgency of the need of the country and, indeed, of civilization. As Judge Gary truly said in his report to stockholders for the year 1918: “these plants were conceived and undertaken solely as war measures.”

Both the Kearny plant, operated by the Federal Shipbuilding Co., a subsidiary of the American Bridge Co., and the Chickasaw plant, operated by the Chickasaw Shipbuilding & Car Co., a subsidiary of the Tennessee Coal, Iron & Railroad Co., were designed to build 10,000-ton vessels. The Federal plant has twelve ways and the Alabama yard six, with a combined capacity of thirty-six ships a year.