Reincarnated Rustless

A popular 1929 tipster stock was International Rustless Iron, whose 5,000,000 shares bounced up and down like a rubber ball. The crash put a tarnish on International Rustless; in 1932 its stock kicked around at 15-c- a share. Among burnt stockholders were tall, rusty-haired Yale athlete Charles Shipman Payson. socialite and horse-lover, and sturdy, up-from-the ranks Clarence Ewing Tuttle, a banker engineer from Hastings, Minn.

Aside from wanting to rescue their large investment, both men were sure the company's patents (on short cuts in making stainless steel) were an asset if used for steel production, not stock manipulation. They went to work, changed the company's name to Rustless Iron & Steel Corp., slashed capitalization. President until 1936 was Payson, who married Sportsman Payne Whitney's daughter, reared four children. Then Tuttle took over, launched a five-year expansion program.

Last week, to celebrate his program's completion, tan, robust "Tut" Tuttle invited some 500 newsmen, steel technicians and customers to look over his expanded Baltimore plant. They jostled each other in the long, low, light green business offices, ate liberally of a free buffet lunch, marveled at the progress that had been made. A promoter's scheme in 1929, near bankrupt in 1933, Rustless is now one of the Big Three stainless steel makers (other two: Allegheny Ludlum, Republic). Capacity has been upped from 20,000 tons (1934) to 75,000 tons, nearly one-half the entire U. S. 1939 production.

"Tut" was farsighted or lucky. When he laid out his program in 1935 he reckoned on kitchen utensils, Boy Scout knives, soda fountains, perhaps the automobile and construction trades to take the bulk of his expanded output. But 1940 finds him sitting on top of a war boom that keeps some departments of his new plant on three shifts. Because Rustless sells only ingots, billets, slabs, bars, rods and wire, does no fabricating, "Tut" is not sure what percent of his sales go into defense. But stainless steel is used for turbine blades in warships, for the barrels of Garand rifles; in bomb sights, landing gear, machine-gun mounts, control equipment and other aircraft parts.

Many a seasoned steelman, looking at Rustless' clean new plant, wondered how this little company dared quadruple output while some industrial mammoths shunned expansion, now found themselves faced with rationing old customers for lack of capacity. One explanation is "Tut's" business philosophy: "Lower costs, lower prices, and your selling base is broadened." Whenever this policy failed to produce results, "Tut" turned salesman, left his plain, wood-paneled office, soon brought back a bulging order book. On "Tut's" customer lists are American Rolling Mill (which now owns 48.6% of the common stock, but lets Tuttle run his own show), Superior Steel, Sharon Steel, Pittsburgh Steel, Eastern Rolling Mill, Ford, Chrysler, many others. Sales this year will be a record $12,000,000, up from $6,388,000 last year. Profits will be over $1,250,000, against $1,091,000 in 1939, red ink in 1934.

Rustless' plant still smells of fresh paint, looks more like a candy factory than a steel mill. Even the 1,500 employes are new; their average age is 29 and two thirds of them are draft prospects. In production, everything possible is done to protect the finish. From the time molten metal is poured into aluminum-painted molds until rolls of shiny wire are packed in burlap or excelsior-lined wooden cases, the steel never touches the concrete floor. With most sales made on special order, Rustless has hundreds of formulas. But most stainless steel is 16 to 18% chromium (9% minimum), 8 to 12% nickel, less than 1% carbon. Most of the chrome used to come from Turkey and Greece; "Tut" now buys from Rhodesia, the Philippines, New Caledonia, and his own Pacific Coast mines, which turned out 600 tons last month, a third more than the yearly average U. S. shipments between 1921 and 1937.

One of Baltimore's leading businessmen, "Tut" is no socialite. He spends most of his spare time on his farm outside the city, riding, kicking around in the hayfields, planning crops. Hence, when he got on the speakers' platform in Baltimore's swank Belvedere Hotel last week, he squirmed in his tuxedo. Nervously folding and unfolding his hands, he outlined the history of Rustless, declared it was "a refutation of the defeatist philosophy that no frontiers remain in America."

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