More in the Mill

The closer election day drew, the busier the Department of Justice's antitrust division became. Last week, on the heels of its suit against the Big Four meat packers (TIME, Sept. 27), the trustbusters went after two oldtime targets, the Aluminum Co. of America and E. I. du Pont de Nemours & Co.

In New York, antitrust asked the U.S. district court to force Alcoa to reduce its power and size--without specifying how.

The suit came as something of a surprise to Alcoa. In 1945, a U.S. circuit court of appeals had found that Alcoa was a prewar monopoly but withheld judgment on its postwar status until all Government-owned aluminum plants were disposed of. Alcoa shrewdly did what it could to help the U.S. get rid of them. It turned over to the Government its patents on the extraction of alumina (the raw material for aluminum) from low-grade bauxite, thus making it possible for the Government to sell and lease aluminum plants to Reynolds Metals Co. and Henry Kaiser.

While this was going on, the trustbusters, who had court permission to specify how Alcoa should be broken up--if it was still a monopoly--did nothing. Last week, just 18 months later, the trustbusters passed the buck back to the district court, asking it to specify what should be done with Alcoa.

In the face of this, Alcoa's President Roy A. Hunt snapped: "Pure election-year politics." He pointed out that his competitors, Reynolds Metals and Kaiser's Permanente Metals Corp., now have 50% of the aluminum ingot market. And they are finding it profitable. Permanente, producing 20% of the U.S.'s basic aluminum, last week reported twelve-month sales of $69.6 million, a net of $9.2 million (up 75%).

The Du Pont case also had some odd aspects:

In Chicago, the trustbusters launched a federal grand jury investigation to determine if Du Pont had violated antitrust laws in its stock ownership or dealings with General Motors Corp., U.S. Rubber

Co., Remington Arms Co., Inc., Ethyl Corp., Kinetic Chemicals Inc., North American Aviation Inc. and Bendix Aviation Corp. More than a year ago the antitrusters had also prepared, but never filed, a suit against Du Pont to ask that it get rid of its 23% control of General Motors. The new investigation, which also seemed likely to last well past November, included two companies (North American and Bendix) in which G.M. had publicly sold its holdings earlier this year.

Such anachronisms did not bother antitrust's busy boss, Assistant Attorney General Herbert A. Bergson. His department had $3,400,000 given by the last Congress, more money than it had ever had. With it, Bergson predicted last week that he would outbust Trustbuster Teddy Roosevelt, who had gone after Du Pont in 1907. Said Bergson: "We have a lot more cases in the mill than they had then."

This file is automatically generated by a robot program, so reader's discretion is required.