., owner of various subsidiary companies, some of which were
as yet blissfully ignorant of their fate. All had been thought out as
calmly as the partition of Poland--only, lawyers were required; and
ultimately, after the process of acquisition should have been completed,
a delicate document was to be drawn up which would pass through the
meshes of that annoying statutory net, the Sherman Anti-trust Law. New
mines were to be purchased, extending over a certain large area; wide
coal deposits; little strips of railroad to tap them. The competition of
the Keystone Plate people was to be met by acquiring and bringing up
to date the plate mills of King and Son, over the borders of a sister
state; the Somersworth Bridge and Construction Company and the Gring
Steel and Wire Company were to be absorbed. When all of this should
have been accomplished, there would be scarcely a process in the steel
industry, from the smelting of the ore to the completion of a bridge,
which the Boyne Iron Works could not undertake. Such was the beginning
of the "lateral extension" period.

"Two can play at that game," Mr. Scherer said. "And if those fellows
could only be content to let well enough alone, to continue buying their
crude steel from us, there wouldn't be any trouble."...

It was evident, however, that he really welcomed the "trouble," that
he was going into battle with enthusiasm. He had already picked out his
points of attack and was marching on them. Life, for him, would have
been a poor thing without new conflicts to absorb his energy; and he had
already made of the Boyne Iron Works, with its open-hearth furnaces, a
marvel of modern efficiency that had opened the eyes of the Steel world,
and had drawn the attention of a Personality in New York,--a Personality
who was one of the new and dominant type that had developed with such
amazing rapidity, the banker-dinosaur; preying upon and superseding the
industrial-dinosaur, conquering type of the preceding age, builder
of the railroads, mills and manufactories. The banker-dinosaurs, the
gigantic ones, were in Wall Street, and strove among themselves for
the industrial spoils accumulated by their predecessors. It was
characteristic of these monsters that they never fought in the open
unless they were forced to. Then the earth rocked, huge economic
structures tottered and fell, and much dust arose to obscure the
vision of smaller creatures, who were bewildered and terrified. Such
disturba