"Shining Model." From The Bulletin Index, 22 November 1934.
In 34 years of business, small but shining Allegheny Steel Company has paid out $19,000,000 in dividends. It has never missed a quarterly dividend, even with Depression deficits. Last week it kept its record intact, declared $1.75 for every preferred share, 15c for every common.
Model of sound corporate structure and financial management, Allegheny Steel has had only one president since the day in 1900 Harry E. Sheldon and Capt. Alfred Hicks founded it. Never has President Sheldon increased capitalization beyond the original $300,000, nor merged another company but that he promptly moved its operations to the main works at nearby Brackenridge, Pa. Such sane methods have made Allegheny Steel a compact, stable steel-making unit without a funded debt. Its finances are clean as a whistle.
Always a maker of specialty steels, Allegheny in 1922 produced the first chrome iron. Then in 1926 astute President Sheldon had another idea, and the first marketable stainless steel (Allegheny Metal) was made at Brackenridge. Since that day Steelman Sheldon has so concentrated on Allegheny Metal that his company today makes half of the U. S.'s 11,000-ton yearly output of stainless steel. As he has for years, he still gazes clairvoyantly to the close tomorrow when stainless steel becomes one of the industry's major products, used in everything from knives to Pullman cars.
Primed for domination of the field when that day comes, Harry Sheldon has assembled a potent knot of level-headed executives trained in the Sheldon manner: Executive Vice President & General Manager W. F. Detwiler, 53, who taught country school at 18, got his job with Allegheny Steel when the night watchman committed suicide; Vice President James O. Carr, onetime New York State Public Service Commissioner, with the company since 1918; V. B. Browne, Barbados-born, vice president in charge of research, who has been largely responsible for developing Allegheny Metal to successful commercial usage. But grey little Harry Sheldon at 72 is still key man.
An early orphan, Steelman Sheldon came up in the Pittsburgh's Lawrenceville Episcopal Home for Boys. At nine he was firing the orphanage furnaces and running the laundry washers. At 14 he began as a machine shop apprentice. Later with the Kirkpatrick Co., sheet steel makers, at $2 a week, he ran the gamut of promotion from hammer man to manager. When U. S. Steel gobbled up the company in 1900, he founded Allegheny Steel. He has a summer home in Belgrade Lakes, Maine, owns a 180-acre modern dairy farm near Butler where he raises Guernsey cattle. He likes golf, which he learned to play at 64.
Last updated: 4 July 1999.