Page:Walter Renton Ingalls - Wealth and Income of the American People (1924).pdf/146

124 for it afford a rough indication of the status of the copper smelting industry of the country.

The zinc smelting industry under normal conditions employs about 5,000 men who use plant costing about $2,000 per man.

According to a brief submitted by John A. Topping, chairman of the board of the Republic Iron and Steel Co., in behalf of the independent steel companies, to the Committee on Finance of the U. S. Senate, Aug. 25, 1921, the census of manufactures in the United States in 1914 showed that the steel industry of the country had then a capital investment of 4.3 billion dollars. The annual capacity for production of steel ingots was about 40,000,000 tons of 2,240 lb. Thus the invested capital was about $100 per ton of 2,000 lb. At present the capacity is about 61,600,000 short tons (55,000,000 long tons) of ingots, representing an investment of about 6.2 billion dollars (at 1914 prices). With full operation of the industry about 1,500,000 persons are employed. The plant and working capital that they use stands therefore at upward of $4,000 per worker.

The Bethlehem Steel Co. has a property investment of about 200 million dollars in its commercial steel plants, which have capacity for the production of about 3300 million long tons of steel per annum and for the employment of about 100 thousand men. These data indicate a plant cost of about $60 per long ton ($54 per short ton) of steel and about $2,000 per worker, which quotients are not out of line with those figured from Mr. Topping’s data which represent plant plus working capital.