Page 53 - Napoleon Hill Think and Grow Rich Full Book | Success Learned

"More than that, he told the buccaneers among them wherein lay the errors of
their customary piracy. Their purposes, he inferred, bad been to create monopo-
lies, raise prices, and pay themselves fat dividends out of privilege. Schwab con-
demned the system in his heartiest manner. The shortsightedness of such a poli-
cy, he told his hearers, lay in the fact that it restricted the market in an era when
everything cried for expansion. By cheapening the cost of steel, he argued, an
ever-expanding market would be created; more uses for steel would be devised,
and a goodly portion of the world trade could be captured. Actually, though he did
not know it, Schwab was an apostle of modern mass production.

"So the dinner at the University Club came to an end. Morgan went home, to
think about Schwab's rosy predictions. Schwab went back to Pittsburgh to run
the steel business for "Wee Andra Carnegie,' while Gary and the rest went back to
their stock tickers, to fiddle around in anticipation of the next move.

"It was not long coming. It took Morgan about one week to digest the feast of rea-
son Schwab had placed before him. When he had assured himself that no financial
indigestion was to result, he sent for Schwab-and found that young man rather
coy. Mr. Carnegie, Schwab indicated, might not like it if he found his trusted com-
pany president had been flirting with the Emperor of Wall Street, the Street upon
which Carnegie was resolved never to tread.

53

NAPOLEON HILL THINK AND GROW RICH

Then it was suggested by John W. Gates the go-between, that if Schwab "hap-
pened' to be in the Bellevue Hotel in Philadelphia, J. P. Morgan might also "hap-
pen' to be there. When Schwab arrived, however, Morgan was inconveniently ill
at his New York home, and so, on the elder man's pressing invitation, Schwab
went to New York and presented himself at the door of the financier's library.

"Now certain economic historians have professed the belief that from the begin-
ning to the end of the drama, the stage was set by Andrew Carnegie-that the din-
ner to Schwab, the famous speech, the Sunday night conference between Schwab
and the Money King, were events arranged by the canny Scot. The truth is exactly
the opposite. When Schwab was called in to consummate the deal, he didn't even
know whether v the little boss,' as Andrew was called, would so much as listen to
an offer to sell, particularly to a group of men whom Andrew regarded as being
endowed with something less than holiness. But Schwab did take into the confer-
ence with him, in his own handwriting, six sheets of copper-plate figures, repre-
senting to his mind the physical worth and the potential earning capacity of every
steel company he regarded as an essential star in the new metal firmament.

"Four men pondered over these figures all night. The chief, of course, was Mor-