Some of the principal markets for United States Steel’s surplus output, with the products they take are: Iceland, wire products and structural steel; Java, Sumatra, and Borneo, oil piping and galvanized sheets; India, sheets and wire products; Argentina, structural and merchant products; South Africa, pipe and light rails for use in diamond mines; Pacific coast countries of South America, roofing material, wire, rails, etc.; Patagonia, railway material; Canada and Mexico, practically every product made; Northern Africa, wire and sheets; Egypt, wire and cotton ties; Australia, a general line; the countries formerly comprising the Austrian empire, wire goods and pipe; Syria and the Holy Land, wire fence, pipe, and small nails used in putting together date boxes; Rangoon, pipe, nails, fence, and sheets; West Indies, a general line; Rumania, oil pipe; Central America, a general line; Greece, pipe, wire, sheets, etc.
China has for years been an important consumer of American steel. Her takings cover many lines and include bridge material, pipe, sheets for roofing as well as for making stove-pipes; tin plate used in making containers of egg yolk, which she ships principally to the United States, wire goods of various kinds, nails, including an extremely small type used in making bamboo furniture. In addition, owing to her low labor costs, China is a great market for scrap steel, such as defective wire rods, wire shorts and seconds, bar ends and plate cuttings, which are worked by hand into all sorts of implements. The patient and industrious Celestial even finds use for old horseshoes, which he makes into razors.
The Corporation has thirty-six foreign offices, located in Argentina, Australia, Belgium, Brazil, British India, Canada, Chile, China, Cuba, France, Holland, Italy, Japan, Java, Mexico, Norway, Peru, Russia, Spain, South Africa, and the United Kingdom. In addition to these, it has one hundred and thirty-six distributors located in forty-four foreign countries.
Although the Steel Products Co. avails itself of the facilities for shipping offered by the many steamship lines plying between America and foreign ports, the enormous expansion of its export trade has forced it to establish and maintain a large ocean-going fleet of its own. Formerly, the greater part of this fleet was chartered, but now the Corporation owns twenty vessels, and has only a few others chartered. These vessels carry its products all over the world, touching at many little-known ports and harbors, the waters of which are never disturbed by the prows of regular liners. At these places they put off loads of rails, tools, and diversified products, instruments with which pioneers, like railway builders, are extending the marts of civilization into untrodden lands.
All of the owned vessels fly the Stars and Stripes, those built in foreign countries having been transferred to American registry immediately upon the passage of the Ship Registry Bill, in 1914.
Most of the ships owned by the Corporation were built at its own plants in New Jersey and Alabama. The Federal Shipbuilding Co., the Corporation’s shipbuilding subsidiary near New York, has supplied it, so far, with nine vessels, each ranging from 3,450 to 3,821 tons net register. The Chickasaw Shipbuilding & Car Co. is responsible for the construction of four others, the largest of which, and the largest boat owned by the Corporation, is 4,045 tons net register on about 10,000 dead weight. The other seven vessels were purchased. At the time of writing the Corporation has under construction fourteen other vessels, all of which will be added to its fleet when finished.
Two of the Corporation’s boats were lost during the war, one a victim to a German submarine and the other running aground off the Chilean coast early in 1918.
No less than fourteen different steamship lines are operated by the Steel Products Co., which through them handles its fleet. These lines are: Isthmian Steamship Line; New York and South America Line (to Chile and Peru); Pacific Coast Service (to Pacific coast, United States, and Canada); New York-Far East; New York-Rotterdam Service; New York-Mediterranean Service; Gulf-Rotterdam Service; Gulf-River Plate Service; Gulf-India Service; Gulf-Scandinavia Service; Pacific Coast, United Kingdom & Continent Service; Norton Line (New York to River Plate); United States and Brazil Steamship Line; Panama-Far East Line.
The shipping of steel to certain points lacking a regular service often makes necessary the employment of expedients to reduce the attendant costs. For instance, prior to the opening of the Panama Canal, a fleet of six vessels was engaged in the trade with the east and west coasts of South America. These vessels sailing from the Atlantic seaboard made calls at various points in Argentina, Chile, Peru, and thence to British Columbia, where they found themselves empty and without opportunity for picking up a cargo for the return trip. The expense of the long journey in ballast round the Strait of Magellan home was prohibitive, so these vessels usually made trips to French or English ports, carrying general merchandise, making the shorter trip across the Atlantic to their home port under ballast, or with a cargo if it was possible to get one. Such a voyage would cover 35,000 to 40,000 miles and take about nine months. The opening of the Panama Canal, however, has changed the conditions that made this necessary.
The shipping of steel to the less-known parts of the world involves difficulties never encountered in the home market. The men in charge of exports must be men of initiative, accustomed to overcoming handicaps as they arise and to deliver the goods without the aid of the efficient methods of civilization.