THE traditional explanation of Alcoa's forward integration prior to 1930 was summarized by Peck [12, P. I24] as follows: Alcoa initially entered fabricating [aluminum forms such as sheet] pri- marily because of the lack of interest in aluminum by existing metal fabricators. In end-products [such as furniture], however, Alcoa followed a general policy of persuading existing end-product manufacturers to produce new aluminum products, and only after indifferent or no success did Alcoa produce end-products, and then only temporarily and on a small scale. According to this line of thought, Alcoa's forward integration served to demonstrate the technical and commercial feasibility of new aluminum pro- ducts. Independent firms could thereafter assume production of these goods. In this paper, we attempt to show that this view is somewhat naive in light of the more appealing hypothesis that Alcoa's forward integration was in- spired by price discrimination. After briefly discussing price discrimination via forward integration, we proceed to examine forward integration by Alcoa prior to I930.