United States Steel: A Corporation with a Soul

by Arundel Cotter

And indeed, no more striking exposition of the wide scope of the export market for steel made in America which has been developed within the past sixteen years has ever been given than was embraced in his testimony on the occasion mentioned. His statement which, incidentally, consumed nine days, was a remarkable story of business achievement. He showed that the exports of the Corporation were of a variety as miscellaneously wide as was their distribution, ranging from cotton ties for Egypt to highway bridges for Iceland; from wire products for the Holy Land to light rails and pipes for the diamond mines of the Transvaal; from galvanized sheets for the houses of the Borneo natives to the steel skeleton work for some of Buenos Aires’ large and beautiful buildings; in fact, everything made of steel was shipped “from Greenland’s icy mountains to India’s coral strand.”

Farrell is one of the men of which the steel trade furnishes so many examples, men who have worked their way up from the foot of the ladder to the highest places in the industrial and commercial world. Born at New Haven, Conn., on February 15, 1863, he started his working career as a laborer in a wire mill in his home town while yet in his teens—at the age of fifteen and a half. But it was not long before he was doing skilled work, and from this it was, for Farrell, an easy step to a more responsible position.

While he had made good in the shops Farrell’s ability ran rather to the selling than to the manufacturing end of the industry. He was a merchant, a salesman, above all things, and he was soon given an opportunity to prove his ability in this line when he was sent on the road for the Pittsburgh Wire Co., with which concern he had become connected. Later, when that company was absorbed by the American Steel & Wire Co., Farrell won his way to the sales managership. His success there was pronounced, and when the company decided to enter the foreign field, he was offered, and accepted, leadership in the new venture. When the Steel Corporation later took over the American Steel & Wire Co., Farrell acted as foreign sales agent for the big merger, and finally, as already stated, became the first president of the Steel Products Co.

How satisfactorily he filled this position was shown by his selection by Judge Gary later as president of the parent corporation. Farrell’s elevation to the presidency of the United States Steel Corporation took place in January, 1911.

Farrell deserves to be reckoned, along with Gary, Morgan, Perkins, and Schwab, as one of “the men who made United States Steel.” Although occupying a comparatively unimportant position at the time of the birth of the Corporation his connection with it has lasted throughout its history and for the past ten years he has had general oversight of the manufacturing and selling operations.

Although no longer in direct charge of the management of the Steel Products Co., Farrell still takes a keen and personal interest in all that concerns the structure of the foreign business which he helped so materially to erect. He is in close and constant touch with all its export activities, and keeps himself as thoroughly informed of developments affecting world trade in steel as he did when his whole time was devoted to that end of the business.

Quiet and unassuming, Farrell bears a name for thoroughness and efficiency. He throws himself wholeheartedly into his work, giving it absolute loyalty and untiring energy. He was at one time characterized as “the man who never rested” and there was some reason for the characterization. In times of stress his working day is fourteen hours or longer. But he has a splendid physique and a constitution apparently of the steel in which he deals.

At first glance Farrell impresses the observer as “pure business.” His manner suggests impatience of waste of time or language, and he seldom makes even an unnecessary gesture. In appearance he typifies the cold, unsentimental, even hard, business man. But his looks do him an injustice for he is, if one is fortunate enough to pierce beneath the surface, a man of broad sympathies and rare delicacy and tact.

Farrell was succeeded as head of the Steel Products Co. by Eugene P. Thomas, who since 1906 had assisted him in building up that company’s world business. Thomas was born in Atlanta, Ga., on May 11, 1876. He began as a newspaperman, but after a brief experience in that profession entered the steel trade. He was one of the pioneers of foreign trade in steel, having gone to England as a salesman for the company with which he was then connected, Lorain Steel, in 1899. Before he had attained his thirty-fifth year he was head of the greatest export organization in the United States.

As already explained, American steel manufacturers had made little systematic or sustained effort to capture foreign trade prior to the organization of United States Steel. Such campaigns for world business as had been undertaken had not been conducted, as a rule, in such a manner as to give the steel maker of this country a good name abroad. The people of the steel-consuming countries—as distinct from those producing their own steel—preferred to deal with German, British, or Belgian mills, and for obvious reasons.