Apr. 12, 1962 - Roger M. Blough (pictured), board chairman of the U.S. Steel Corporation, defended his company’s new price increase today as a move to strengthen the nation’s industrial assets. He also asserted the right of an individual company to make its own pricing decisions. Mr. Blough said that the three-and-a-half percent increase initiated by U.S. Steel yesterday had had no “political motivation.” The executive’s comments were made in a prepared statement and in answers to questions at a televised news conference in the first-floor auditorium of U.S. Steel’s New York headquarters at 71 Broadway. The news conference was arranged after President Kennedy had attacked the price increases yesterday as “irresponsible defiance” of the public interest and “ruthless disregard” of the steel companies’ duty to the nation.
