ABSTRACT
In whose febrile mind was originally conceived the United States Steel Corporation will never be clear. It was the second great consolidation in American industry and, like Standard Oil, was termed a trust. It seems quite possible that the success of Standard Oil would have sparked in many alert imaginations the idea of a similar merging of steel interests. But no matter the originator, it was Charles M. Schwab, Andrew Carnegie's manager, who first stated the proposition with an eloquence no other American industrialist could match. Schwab's hypnotic yet energizing eloquence was delivered to an after-dinner audience of important bankers. United States Steel was born of a war between men who have been called the Titans of finance and industry. It started in 1898, or perhaps a year earlier, and lasted three years. John Gates was no man to be content with commissions on sales.
