OREANDA-NEWS. December 03, 2015. Once the US Thanksgiving holiday passes it is never too soon to summon the Christmas spirit. The American steel industry, suffering persistently low prices, high inventories and weak demand, could use a Christmas boost right about now. The following is reprinted from the late American Steel Review, based on the famous 1897 editorial reply “Yes, Virginia, there is a Santa Claus.”

Yes, Virginia, there is a turnaround

Dear editor,

I am a young professional in the American steel industry and cannot believe the market will ever rebound. Some of my friends say there is no turnaround, but my papa, a long-time steel executive, says, “If you see it in The American Steel Review, it’s so.” Please tell me the truth, will there be a turnaround for the steel industry?

— Virginia O’Magarac

Virginia, your friends are wrong. They have been affected by the skepticism of a skeptical age and do not believe what they cannot see.

Yes, Virginia, there is a turnaround. It exists as certainly as money and conspicuous consumption and Hummers exist, and you know that they abound and give to your life its highest beauty and joy.

Alas! How dreary would be the world if there were no turnaround! It would be as dreary as if there were no low-priced slabs from Russia. There would be no childlike recycling, no hot-rolling, no tension-leveling to make tolerable this existence. We should have no enjoyment, except in aluminum beer cans and titanium dental implants. The eternal light with which consumers fill the world would be extinguished.

You might get your papa to hire outside contractors to watch all the blast furnaces on Christmas Eve to catch the turnaround, but even if you did, what would that prove?

Nobody sees a turnaround, but that is no sign that there is no turnaround. The most real things in the world are those that neither importers nor exporters can see.

Nobody can conceive or imagine all the wonders there are unseen and unseeable in the marketplace.