steel that have no parallel elsewhere.
The steel companies which are located here do not have to bring their
materials laboriously from a distance but possess, immediately at
hand, apparently endless store of the three things needful for making
steel--iron ore, coal, and limestone. All these territories have their
personal romances and their heroes, many of them quite as picturesque as
those of the Pittsburgh group.

It is doubtful indeed if American industry presents any figure quite
as astonishing and variegated as that of John W. Gates, the man who
educated farmers all over the world to the use of wire fencing. Half
charlatan, half enthusiast, speculator, gambler, a man who created great
enterprises and who also destroyed them, at times an upbuilding force
and at other times a sinister influence, Gates completely typified a
period in American history that, along with much that was heroic and
splendid, had much also that was grotesque and sordid. The opera-bouffe
performance that laid the foundations of Gates's great industry was in
every way characteristic of this period. In 1871 Gates, then a clerk in
a hardware store at twenty-five dollars a week, made his first attempt
to sell barbed wire in the great cattle countries of the southwestern
States. When the cattle men in Texas first saw this barbed wire, they
ridiculed the idea that it could ever hold their steers. Gates selected
a plaza in San Antonio, fenced it in with his new product, and invited
the enemies to bring along their wildest specimens About thirty of
Texas' most ferocious cattle, placed within the enclosure, spent a whole
afternoon plunging at the barbs in a useless and tormenting attempt
to escape. This spectacular demonstration of efficiency launched Gates
fairly upon his career. He immediately began to sell his new fencing on
an enormous scale; in a few years the whole world was demanding it,
and it has become, as recent events have disclosed, a particularly
formidable munition of war. The American Steel and Wire Company, one
of the greatest of American corporations, was the ultimate outgrowth of
that lively afternoon in San Antonio.

In 1900 the Carnegie Steel Company was making one-quarter of all the
Bessemer steel produced in the United States. It owned in abundance
all the properties which were essential to its completed output--coal,
limestone, steel ships, railroads, and steel mills. In twenty-five
years, from 1875 to 1900, this manufacturin