Page 52 - Napoleon Hill Think and Grow Rich Full Book | Success Learned

Schwab's eloquence took J. P. Morgan to the heights from which he could visual-
ize the solid results of the most daring financial undertaking ever conceived, the
project was regarded as a delirious dream of easy-money crackpots.

"The financial magnetism that began, a generation ago, to attract thousands of
small and sometimes inefficiently managed companies into large and competi-
tion-crushing combinations, had become operative in the steel world through the
devices of that jovial business pirate, John W. Gates. Gates already had formed
the American Steel and Wire Company out of a chain of small concerns, and to-
gether with Morgan had created the Federal Steel Company.

The National Tube and American Bridge companies were two more Morgan con-
cerns, and the Moore Brothers had forsaken the match and cookie business to
form the "American' group- Tin Plate, Steel Hoop, Sheet Steel-and the National
Steel Company.

"But by the side of Andrew Carnegie's gigantic vertical trust, a trust owned and
operated by fifty-three partners, those other combinations were picayune. They
might combine to their heart's content but the whole lot of them couldn't make a
dent in the Carnegie organization, and Morgan knew it.

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NAPOLEON HILL THINK AND GROW RICH

"The eccentric old Scot knew it, too. From the magnificent heights of Skibo Castle
he had viewed, first with amusement and then with resentment, the attempts of
Morgan's smaller companies to cut into his business. When the attempts became
too bold, Carnegie's temper was translated into anger and retaliation. He decided
to duplicate every mill owned by his rivals. Hitherto, he hadn't been interested in
wire, pipe, hoops, or sheet. Instead, he was content to sell such companies the raw
steel and let them work it into whatever shape they wanted. Now, with Schwab as
his chief and able lieutenant, he planned to drive his enemies to the wall.

"So it was that in the speech of Charles M. Schwab, Morgan saw the answer to his
problem of combination. A trust without Carnegie-giant of them all-would be no
trust at all, a plum pudding, as one writer said, without the plums.

"Schwab's speech on the night of December 12, 1900, undoubtedly carried the in-
ference, though not the pledge, that the vast Carnegie enterprise could be brought
under the Morgan tent.

He talked of the world future for steel, of reorganization for efficiency, of speciali-
zation, of the scrapping of unsuccessful mills and concentration of effort on the
flourishing properties, of economies in the ore traffic, of economies in overhead
and administrative departments, of capturing foreign markets.