Homer Ferguson

Homer Ferguson, a former judge and Republican senator from Michigan, became one of the most persistent questioners on Harry S. Truman’s wartime investigative committee. In hearings on falsified steel tests, he pressed company representatives to confront testimony about cheating, the origin of suspect plates, and the difference between steel that might serve its eventual purpose and steel that met the Government’s stated requirements. His scrutiny helped make the committee’s investigation concrete, even as the hearing left the extent of senior management’s responsibility unresolved.

Appointment and Committee Role

The committee began modestly, but within a few months it had produced results and attracted attention. By fall, its appropriation had risen from $15,000 to $50,000, and its membership had expanded. Ferguson joined as one of two additional Republicans, alongside Harold Burton of Ohio; Harley Kilgore of West Virginia was added as a Democrat. The account identifies Ferguson as a former judge and singles him out, with fellow Republican Owen Brewster, as a particularly tenacious interrogator at hearings.

That description captures a specific role within the committee rather than sole control of its inquiries. In the steel hearings, Brewster and Ferguson pressed the company’s case hardest, while chief counsel Hugh Fulton and Truman entered the questioning at intervals. Ferguson’s contribution lay in following a claim through its implications: who made the steel, what the company knew about testing, and whether its defense could be reconciled with the testimony already given.

Following the Steel-Test Evidence

The inquiry examined practices at the Irvin Works, where employees had described manipulating steel-test records. One assistant metallurgist testified that he had learned to fake tests at another large Carnegie-Illinois mill, the Edgar Thomson Works, and claimed he could fool a Navy inspector when one was present. In a related exchange, an employee who had been caught cheating by a Navy inspector had not been fired, but demoted. Ferguson asked whether the demotion followed from the employee having gone too far; a senior metallurgist confirmed that it had.

The exchange exposed a troubling distinction: the employee had faced a lesser workplace penalty, while the underlying practice of falsifying tests remained at issue. The testimony also described a culture in which cheating could be treated as a matter of degree. Ferguson’s questions helped put that distinction on the record, without by themselves resolving who had authorized or tolerated the conduct.

Confronting the Company’s Defense

Company executive Perry resisted the language of cheating, preferring to characterize the misconduct as misrepresentation. He argued that even substandard plates were suitable for their intended use and said that higher management had not taken part in the practices disclosed by investigators. On the Schenectady, he denied that defective steel from the Irvin Works had caused the ship to break apart, adding that the plate at the point where the break began had not come from that mill.

Ferguson followed the disputed plate back to its source. Perry again denied that it had been made at Irvin, then acknowledged that it came from Homestead. Ferguson connected that admission to testimony that an employee had been taught to cheat at Homestead. Perry objected to the word, but the issue Ferguson was pursuing was not merely terminology: it was whether the company’s own evidence supported its attempt to separate the suspect material from the testing practices under investigation.

Ferguson then framed the dispute through the Government’s specification. If a customer required steel with a breaking strength of 60,000 pounds and received material measuring 57,000 pounds, while test figures represented it as meeting the higher standard, Perry agreed that this would misrepresent a material fact. Ferguson asked whether the evidence indicated that this had happened in as much as five percent of the material supplied. Perry treated that as the evidence presented at the hearing, but questioned whether it applied to material tested or supervised by the Navy. Ferguson countered with testimony that cheating could occur even with a Navy inspector standing by. Perry conceded that such conduct, if it occurred, was misrepresentation, yet continued to maintain that the steel was not inferior for its end use.

The questioning brought the contradiction into focus: Perry accepted the Government’s right to set specifications and agreed that the company should meet them, while defending material on the ground that it could still serve its intended purpose. When Ferguson asked why the specifications had not been followed, Perry said they would be. Truman interjected that they would. Ferguson’s line of inquiry thus narrowed the defense from a general claim of usefulness to the company’s obligation to supply what the Government had actually ordered.

Findings and Unanswered Responsibility

The hearing lasted five hours. After Perry, the company’s attorney argued that he needed to master the technical details of steel production before justifying the situation. Truman challenged the relevance of that explanation to removing employees from positions of responsibility when records had been tampered with. His intervention complemented Ferguson’s questioning: both brought the testimony back from technical language to the basic issue of falsified tests and obligations to the Government.

The investigation did not establish how far up the company the blame extended. No one above chief metallurgist W. F. McGarrity admitted knowing that tests had been rigged or records falsified, and the hearing uncovered no substantial personal motive for the mill employees’ deception. One plausible explanation offered was that the falsification served an effort to produce an impressive production record. Ferguson’s pointed examination clarified what the testimony suggested about false representations and noncompliance; it did not settle who beyond the employees involved had known, directed, or benefited from the practice.