Vesting Day

STEEL, William (Bill), loving father of Lena Thyme Cumming of Magic Circle Institute, Whitehall. Interment Feb. 15. Enquiries: Enterprise Ltd.

This death notice in the Sheffield Star was a British joke, but it fitted the dubious, unenthusiastic mood with which many Britons greeted "Vesting Day," i.e., the day last week when the government formally took over the nation's 80 major steel companies.

Ironically, the man appointed by the government to boss the state's fledgling Iron & Steel Corp., which will run the industry, had been one of the stars of British free enterprise. Steven Hardie, a brawny, 65-year-old Scot, had risen from an obscure position as a chartered accountant in Glasgow to captain of industry (scrap-metal tycoon, oxygen-tank manufacturer). He owned, among other properties, five farms in Australia and one in Rhodesia, a mansion in London's Mayfair. Known as a tough taskmaster, Hardie likes to relax with a good cigar, slips away as often as he can for a day's hunting or fishing. His hand is as deft with a rod as with turning a handsome profit. Winston Churchill dubbed him "one of these rare birds, the millionaire Socialist ... a successful businessman, a past master of monopoly, who has made an immense fortune by 'private greed,' and who, without in any way relinquishing it, has become a convinced Socialist and adherent. His arrogant behavior as a servant and tool of the government will certainly be the subject of continuous attention . . ."

As Hardie sat down last week at his desk in his government corporation's shiny new London office, his bureaucratic machinery was not even in low gear. Said one of his assistants: "We're still busy trying to acquire secretaries and typewriters. Even our tea is hardly organized yet, and it's beastly stuff when it does arrive--absolute slop."

Hardie had need of all his free enterprise genius to get things humming. He began by inviting the bitter masters of the dispossessed iron & steel industry to a cocktail party. Said one of them, privately: "No, I'm not going. I don't know the chairman, and I don't wish to. If I must correspond with him in future, I prefer to address him as 'Dear Sir' rather than 'Dear Mr. Hardie.' "

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