Elbert H. Gary
A year or so before these words were written the big office buildings and apartment houses of New York City were tied up by a strike of elevator operators. The Empire Building, at 71 Broadway, purchased shortly before the strike by the Steel Corporation, however, was not affected. Every man was at his post. And it was perhaps the only big building in the city that showed no sign of the strike.
A newspaper man, visiting the building, asked one of the starters the reason, and he was told:
“As soon as the Corporation bought this building our wages were raised. We are getting as much as or more than the unions are demanding. Judge Gary has treated us white. And you can just bet your life we are going to stick by him, strike or no strike!”
This is only a little incident. But it serves to illustrate the most important characteristic of the head of United States Steel: His sense of justice, the supreme passion of his life. Judge Gary treats everyone “white.”
Judge Gary is not a “glad hand artist.” He is, if anything, too reserved, and hence he does not win popularity quickly with chance acquaintances. But those who know him intimately or have business dealings with him admire, sometimes even reverence him, for they know he not only preaches but practises in every relation of his life the square deal, and when there is any question of what is fair between himself and another, leans over backward and gives the other the advantage.
In the pages of this history the Steel Corporation’s policy of “the square deal” to all has been emphasized time and again. It is the Corporation’s policy because it was first Gary’s. He impressed it on the Corporation, sometimes after a hard fight. To-day it is the foremost policy of the big company as it is the guiding spirit of Gary’s life.
Elbert H. Gary, chief executive officer of the United States Steel Corporation, was born on his father’s farm near Wheaton, Illinois. He was descended from old New England stock on one side, his father, Erastus Gary, having sprung from the hardy Puritans who settled in Massachusetts, while his mother, Abiah Vallette Gary, was a descendant of one of the daring spirits who sailed from France as an officer in the Army of LaFayette and fought with him for the freedom of the American colonies.
The future head of the greatest industrial organization in the world was brought up frugally. He was full of spirits and fond of play, but his Puritan father was a believer in the discipline of hard work, and the youthful Elbert had little time except for his lessons and for work on the farm. “My father didn’t believe much in play,” he once remarked to the writer; “we boys had our choice of working or studying, and the time was divided about equally between the two during each year.” But although Erastus Gary may have been stern and uncompromising he was obviously also a fond and kindly parent. Asked what had been the dominating influence of his life, Judge Gary replied: “My parents. Whatever worth while I may have done I owe to their teaching and example.”
Bee-hive Coke Ovens
When Gary was fourteen the Civil War broke out. The story is told that the news came to the farm one evening that the Union had been attacked and Erastus Gary and his boys sat around the fire discussing the situation and what their course of action should be. But their mother had no such doubts. Walking to the fireplace the old lady took therefrom a rifle and handed it without a word to her eldest son.
Mouth of Coal Mine—Coke Ovens in Background
The Judge himself remembers nothing of the incident and it may be a fabrication pure and simple. However this may be, the fact is that soon after the young Elbert ran away from home and joined the Union ranks. He never had the desired opportunity to fight for the Union as his father discovered his whereabouts—this was probably not difficult as he knew the boy’s spirit—and got him sent back home.
Among the friends of the elder Gary, and frequent visitors at the Wheaton farm, were Col. Henry F. Vallette, an uncle, and Judge Hiram H. Cody, members of the Illinois bar and of the firm of Vallette and Cody, of Naperville, a neighboring town. They had both noticed Elbert Gary’s ability and studious habits, and when the boy was about eighteen years of age Vallette one day asked him: “Elbert, how would you like to become a lawyer?”
Needless to say Gary did not wait to be asked twice. He entered the firm’s office in 1865 and while working there began to read law. Later he took a regular course in a law school at Chicago and was soon admitted to the bar of his state, where his success was rapid and pronounced. In course of time he became Judge of Du Page County and was admitted to the bar of the Supreme Court of the United States.
Meanwhile, he had formed, with his brother Noah and one of his former chiefs, the firm of Gary, Cody & Gary.
Gary became one of the leaders of the Chicago bar, and his ability in handling difficult cases soon attracted to him a number of wealthy clients, among whom were several large corporations, and it was through his connections with one of these corporations that he eventually connected himself exclusively with the steel industry, in which he has since risen to be the most important figure.
In 1898 Gary, as general counsel for and a director of the Illinois Steel Co., was called on to take charge of the organization of the Federal Steel Co., a merger of the Illinois and other companies. It was he who first suggested this amalgamation. Here he was for the first time brought in touch with the late J. Pierpont Morgan, whose financial assistance in the formation of the new company was being sought. The business ability of the lawyer so impressed the New York banker that he and others interested with him insisted that Gary should head Federal Steel. The future head of United States Steel hesitated, for his practice was lucrative and he had become financially independent, but he finally yielded and gave up his legal business, then located at Chicago, and moved to New York, devoting himself thenceforward entirely to steel.
Speaking of the reasons for Morgan’s choice in this matter an old business associate of the Judge’s said: “Legal judgment and business acumen are seldom found in combination. Gary had both these qualities and a higher degree than any man I have ever known. And it was this happy combination that impressed the great banker.”
But more than this, Gary was, and is, a statesman in business. He has the broad vision that distinguishes the statesman from the mere politician and the really great business leader from the average run of executives. He saw beyond immediate effects into the distant future and based his course on this vision.
In writing of the vast majority of men who have achieved success in one line or another it is easy to select some prominent characteristic which particularly distinguishes them. But there are a few who owe their eminence to a variety of well-blended attributes, and Gary is one of these chosen few. This renders it difficult for the chronicler to decide where the heaviest stress should be laid.
A prominent Chicago lawyer who in his youth had worked for years under Gary was appealed to in this regard. And this is what he said:
“Judge Gary had the ability and courage to, whenever necessary, abandon the old precedents which, by reason of changed times and conditions, had been relegated to the scrap heap of progress. He was one of the few attorneys who could, with almost prophetic vision, see the positions which the courts of appeal must eventually be obliged to take with reference to questions of public policy and the great industrial organizations just then in their infancy.”
The lawyer then went on to tell an anecdote illustrating the fact that the Judge though a member of the legal profession did not believe in recourse to litigation when it could be avoided. He said:
“I recall that on one occasion a client called on the Judge in an irate mood and asserted his intention of prosecuting a neighbor for slander. He told Gary what the neighbor had said and asked his opinion and advice. And this was the reply he received: ‘If you are guilty of what he charges perhaps you had better sue; but if you are not—why, go home and forget it.’”
Nor did Gary’s prophetic vision “extend only as regards the position which the courts must take” but to the trend of human events generally. There is nothing uncanny about this foresight or sixth sense. It is due entirely to the fact that its possessor has a mind peculiarly capable of estimating and sizing up the relative values of known causes and deducting from them the natural, in fact, the inevitable results.
No better exemplification of this can be given than is afforded by the policies which he advocated for the Corporation, and which were gradually adopted and put into practice. He saw plainly, long before any one else did, how subject to criticism was the gigantic organization which he had helped to form, and of which he was the head; he realized that its very size contained an element of weakness in that it attracted enmity, and made it the subject of attack.
And in the face of powerful opposition, not only from some of his fellow directors at first—an opposition that gradually diminished and eventually vanished, or was converted into admiration and hearty coöperation—but from subordinate executives of the subsidiary companies who could not accustom themselves immediately to new business methods, he insisted that the big company should so deal with all with whom it came in contact, its competitors, its customers, its workmen, as to make all of these its friends.
Such a consummation was regarded in the beginning as an impracticable dream by nearly everyone of his colleagues, who could not realize that a new industrial era was dawning, but Gary persisted and won out.
The good will he gained for the Corporation from those who otherwise would have been its enemies proved a strong bulwark of defence in the Government’s suit for the dissolution of the “Steel Trust.” Had Gary’s early recommendations on questions of policy been overruled by his associates it is a moral certainty that the Corporation would have been dissolved instead of emerging victorious from the suit. It is difficult to see how any one who had the opportunity to listen to or read the evidence presented in this litigation could fail to have been impressed with the fact that Gary seemed to have anticipated every possible point of attack and to have taken steps to eliminate, or at least to minimize, the danger therefrom. Whatever may have been the differences of opinion in the beginning, for many years the policies advocated by Judge Gary have been endorsed by all of his fellow-directors on the Steel Corporation’s Board; particularly by the members of the Finance Committee, who were more closely associated with him, had a better opportunity of absorbing his viewpoint, and who stood behind him solidly in carrying out his ideas. Gary himself was emphatic on this point in his testimony in the Government suit.
The part played by Gary in bringing about the formation of the U. S. Steel Corporation and in guiding its policies was clearly brought out by the late Robert Bacon, one of the partners in the firm of J. P. Morgan & Co., in his testimony in the suit in question. Mr. Bacon, speaking of the organization of the big company, said: “Judge Gary, of course, directed it all.” And later, in discussing the policies of the Corporation:
“The facts are that the policy of the company from the beginning has been to change the old methods of dealing with competitors. Judge Gary, who has done more for the U. S. Steel Corporation in its development and the benefits it has brought all hands than any one man since its formation, has made it a cardinal point of his policy, and has tried his best to inculcate it upon all the sub-companies, that there was a new order of things come, that there were new rules of the game dealing with competitors, as well as in other human relations. Judge Gary has talked from the very first and has tried to compel the actions of all the others in the Corporation toward dealing fairly and decently with competitors, as being the only way in which any kind of stability of prices or of conditions could be maintained. He has from the beginning preached and practised the fairest kind of dealing with his competitors, keeping them informed, as far as he legitimately could, of all the conditions of the Steel Corporation, and by doing so has gradually acquired a degree of confidence that, in my opinion, has never existed before amongst competitors. The old conditions have changed; the old destructive and ruinous and ruthless warfare of the early days of the iron and steel industry has disappeared, and in its place, by reason of the attitude of Judge Gary, more than any one else, a condition has been produced among competitors in the iron and steel business, and I believe in many other industries, that never before existed.”
Judge Gary’s intense desire for doing justice to all, and his sincere interest in the well-being of the worker, have already been referred to. He is not a reformer in the ordinarily accepted sense of the term. He does not prate about helping the working man, but in guiding the big Corporation he has always seen to it that the man who labors shall be given an opportunity for clean living and self-respect. And it is significant that in arranging wage increases the Corporation has always provided more generously for the lower-paid employee. As a mass, the men who work for the Corporation recognize Judge Gary’s attitude and appreciate it fully. And he sets a higher valuation on this recognition and appreciation than on all the honors that have come to him.
Some years ago Gary, in urging on the subsidiary companies the promotion of safety and welfare work for the Corporation’s employees, said to the casualty managers of the different subsidiary companies: “We (the Finance Committee) shall not hesitate to make the necessary appropriations of money to carry into effect every suggestion that seems to be practicable for the improvement of conditions at our mills.” Later he wrote, repeating his former promise that all needed money would be forthcoming and saying: “The safety and welfare of the workmen is of the greatest concern.”
This promise has been kept sacredly. The writer has visited at one time or another practically all the Corporation’s plants—some of them several times. At each one he has always asked those who devote themselves to welfare work this question: “Have you any difficulty in getting appropriations from the Corporation for welfare work you consider advisable?” And the reply has invariably been the same: “We are never refused.”
In the vast organization that is the United States Steel Corporation there are perhaps hundreds of thousands of men who have never set eyes upon its head, who have no idea what he is like to look upon. But there is probably hardly a man who does not feel his influence, and there are few who do not look up to him with respect and often with something like reverence. His personality has permeated this huge mass of men.
Another attribute of this great business leader is a broad and real tolerance of the opinions of those who do not agree with him. He has built up a vast and wonderfully efficient organization founded on what he conceives to be principles of justice and fair dealing, but his attitude toward those who criticize the structure he has erected is not one of irritation, as might be expected, or of impatience. Rather he endeavors, sincerely and patiently, to disarm criticism by a policy of open dealing.
On one occasion, when certain acts of his had been criticized as constituting a possible violation of the law, he, although believing implicitly that he had not offended, forthwith abandoned the continuance of these acts, so as to leave no shadow of doubt of his intent to obey the law. He explained at the time that though every citizen had the right to criticize legislation, and should seek to have changed such laws as he deemed unjust or uneconomic, he was bound to obey these laws so long as they remained on the statute books.
In physical stature Judge Gary is of medium height. He carries his years well and appears yet in his prime. The impression he gives the observer is that of a statesman rather than a man of affairs, an impression heightened by his deliberate speech and his appreciation of the finer meanings of words. Most of his portraits represent him sitting straight up, just a little stiffly, but when interested in a conversation, the Judge invariably stands, or rather paces deliberately back and forth, his hands stuck in the waistband of his trousers, and his head bent forward at an angle of deep thought. And as he warms to his subject, he now and then gesticulates slightly, or, turning to his listener, drives home some argument with pointed forefinger. At the remembrance of some amusing incident his twinkling eyes light up what is usually a decidedly serious countenance.
All those who during the World War were in touch with what was being done by the Government to meet the enormous new manufacturing needs created by the war know that the Steel Corporation, in the great emergency, invariably put patriotism above profits and that its hearty coöperation helped materially in bringing about the desired end. Judge Gary was responsible for the Corporation’s attitude in this as in other matters.
Honors have been showered upon the head of the Steel Corporation by universities and colleges, and the American, French, Belgian, and Italian governments, and the late Pope Pius X presented a gold medal containing his profile portrait to Judge Gary in recognition of his efforts for improving working conditions. But beyond all these honors he values the esteem of the men under him, and the good will of his competitors.
It would be hard to find a more suitable ending for this brief study of the leading figure in the industrial world than the quotation applied to him by the principal steel makers of the United States and Canada on the occasion of a dinner given in his honor in October, 1909. Here were men who had fought with him and against him, who had had every opportunity to estimate him both as friend and foe, and who, after the trying times of the 1907 panic, declared that he had “played the game and played it fair”:
“Moderate, resolute, whole in himself, a common good.”