ABSTRACT
The instances management will use all available talent, including the skills of professional designers of annual reports, to make sure that this year's report is the best and most effective one that the company has ever issued. Within the past few years, many companies have added at least two more objectives of annual reporting to the time-honored one of informing stockholders and financial analysts. The language of the 1939 report was conspicuous for its clarity and the statistics were presented in a much less formidable and more understandable fashion. The general format of the U. S. Steel reports has undergone only one noteworthy change since the first annual report was issued. Changes in the content of the annual reports for the forty-year span naturally follow the changes in emphasis. That portions of the U. S. Steel annual report which always followed the chairman's letter and which the company now refers to as the 'financial-summary'.
