Roger Blough

Roger M. Blough (January 19, 1904 October 8, 1985) was the chairman of the board and chief executive officer of the United States Steel Corporation for 13½ years, from May 1955 through January 1969.

Blough attended Susquehanna University and was a member of Phi Mu Delta fraternity.

U.S. Steel When Time magazine featured Blough in July 1959, they drew attention to the challenges facing the steel industry in the late 1950s, including inflation and competition from non-U.S. steel exporters. He served as Chairman of The Business Council in 1961 and 1962.

As a consequence of this inflation, Blough told the White House in April 1962 that it was the intent of the U.S. steel industry to raise a basket of steel prices by a scale averaging $6.00/ton. President Kennedy believed that this price increase violated an unwritten agreement that he had brokered between the industry and the United Steel Workers union, and called a press conference in response, held on April 11, 1962. In nationally televised remarks, the President described Blough as one of: “a tiny handful of steel executives whose pursuit of private power and profit exceeds their sense of public responsibility... Some time ago I asked each American to consider what he would do for his country and I asked the steel companies. In the last 24 hours we had their answer.”

Later career In 1969, at the age of 65, Blough retired from U.S. Steel. That same year he re-joined White & Case as a partner and founded the Construction Users Anti-Inflation Roundtable, "affectionately known" as "Roger's Roundtable."

Having lost his effort to raise prices at U.S. Steel during an inflationary period in the early 1960s, he "made it his personal mission to tame the construction unions through (the Roundtable)," effectively blaming inflation on workers' wages. In 1971, he told Congress that wages were "the No. 1 domestic problem of the country."

In 1972, Roger's Roundtable group merged with March Group and the Labor Law Study Group (LLSG) to form Business Roundtable.

Death Blough died at his home in Hawley on October 8, 1985. He was 81.

Personal Blough was married to Helen Decker Blough. The couple had two daughters, Jane French and Judith B. Wentz, and six grandchildren.

In December 1965, Blough purchased a plot of land in town of Hawley and gifted the funds needed to create a new building for the Hawley Public Library. The building, named after Blough's wife, was dedicated on October 30, 1966.

Legacy , an iron ore bulk carrier vessel built for U.S. Steel in 1968-72 and used starting in 1972 in Great Lakes service to transport taconite pellets from Lake Superior to ports on Lake Erie and Lake Michigan, was named in his honor. As of 2018 this vessel remained in service.