Just for the record, I'm talking about very fine (0000 or 000) steel wool here. It seems as though there are two camps on this. One is "Don't EVER uses steel wool on chrome, no matter what!!" The other is, "Sure use it, it works fine!"
My personal philosophy is that it doesn't hurt anything to use steel wool to clean up old chrome stands and the like. Someone once told me that I should never do that, because it will create lots of tiny, microscopic scratches in the chrome. My response to that is always: "This stand is from the 60's. Like it doesn't have scratches on the chrome anyway?"
I have cleaned up many a vintage stand that had some rust, oxdation etc. with very fine steel wool. I think it always looks way better after a steel wool job! It even seems to help make the pitting less noticeable.
I just wanted to see which "camp" everyone was in. I'm in the camp that you're not going to harm an old stand with fine steel wool; I'm sure that stand has been through much worse!