And the youthful Carnegie president swept the financier off his feet and along with him in the flood of his oratory. The United States Steel Corporation was not actually incorporated for some months, as an undertaking so immense naturally took a great deal of time to put through, but it was by that speech that the idea of a vast steel merger, sown in Morgan’s mind by Gary, was quickened into life. In that half hour the United States Steel Corporation, to all intents and purposes, became an actual fact.
CHAPTER II
THE BIRTH OF THE BIG COMPANY
A billion dollars!
During the past seven years the world has grown accustomed to big figures. The enormous expenditures caused by the war and the growth of the national debts of most countries, attributable to the same cause, have made the mention of a sum expressed in ten or more figures rather commonplace. But back in 1901 a billion dollars was an almost unthinkable sum and it was hardly any wonder that the financial world gasped when the plans for the new corporation, with an authorized capitalization of $1,100,000,000 in stock and $304,000,000 in bonds, were announced.
Wall Street had long been accustomed to treat millions with the dollar sign before them as mere trifles and even tens of millions were more or less commonplace. Hundreds of millions commanded respect. But a billion, a thousand million—that seemed merely a row of figures, something that could hardly be computed.
And, indeed, the mind cannot readily comprehend what a billion means. Some concrete comparison is needed to give a faint idea of the immensity of the capital of the “Steel Trust.” A king’s ransom? It would have ransomed a hundred kings! The fabled wealth of Ormus and of Ind, of Croesus, of Montezuma, all these fade into insignificance when compared with this gigantic aggregate of money.
If the authorized capital of the United States Steel Corporation could be turned into solid gold it would weigh 2,330 tons, or more than 5,200,000 pounds!
This gold would have a cubic content of 3,880 feet!