(Train 3 passes 6:47; No. 41, 12:06; No. 25, 8:55; No. 19, 3:08. Eastbound: No. 6 passes 11:06; No. 26, 1:17; No. 16, 2:12; No. 22, 6:23.)
The city of Gary was built to order. Fifteen years ago the site of the present town was nothing but a waste of sand-dunes and swamps intersected from east to west by the Grand Calumet and Little Calumet Rivers. In 1906 the United States Steel Corporation broke ground here for a series of enormous foundries and factories, first laying sewers, water mains, gas pipes and conduits for electric wires, as well as providing other improvements necessary for life of the city. The Steel Corporation had chosen this site partly because of its direct connection by water with the Lake Superior ore region, partly because of its proximity to Chicago, and partly because it was accessible to Virginia coal and Michigan limestone. The town was named Gary in honour of Elbert H. Gary (b. 1846), chairman of the Board of Directors of the Steel Corporation, and in succeeding years there came an influx of inhabitants which has made Gary the largest city in Northern Indiana. In 1906 the city was non-existent; in 1910 it had a population of 16,802; in 1916, 40,000; and the Federal census of 1920 showed that Gary now has more than 55,000 inhabitants.
Gary lies 30 ft. above Lake Michigan on a deep layer of sand, once the bed of the lake, which in prehistoric time extended several miles farther inland. The city has a splendid harbour which has been extended by the use of the two rivers—the Grand and the Little Calumet—both of which have been dredged and enlarged. The heart of the town is at the intersection of Broadway and Fifth Ave., which are lined with handsome buildings, and it is said that within radius of 10 M. of this point, there is a population of 125,000 people, most of whom are engaged in the industries of the Calumet region surrounding Gary.
The early growth of the town was so rapid that facilities for taking care of the new population were inadequate. The congestion was extreme, and real estate speculators did thriving business. Today it is said that Gary has constructed public utilities and other improvements adequate for a city of a quarter of a million people, and there is little doubt that the population will reach that figure before many years have passed. The city has fine public schools (the Gary system has become famous throughout the United States), a Y.M.C.A. (costing $250,000), and an excellent library. The City Hall and the Union station are likewise notable for the scale on which they are built.
Although Gary was built to order by the Steel Corporation, its officials did not undertake to control or direct the civic affairs of the town. Thus, the development of the Gary system of education was a natural, rather than an artificial one. There was every opportunity for an altogether new departure, in view of the inadequacy of school facilities for the fast growing population. The new system was introduced into the Gary schools by William Wirt, who had already made some experiments in this direction before 1907 (when he was called to Gary) at Bluffton, Ind., where he had been in charge of the public schools. Some of the fundamental principles of Mr. Wirt's plan are that "students learn best by doing" and that "all knowledge can be applied." Latin, for example, is not studied for mental discipline, but for actual use. The system also involves keeping the school buildings in use for entertainment or instruction throughout the entire day and evening, and numerous courses are provided for adults. It has been said that in Gary "every third person goes to school." The overcrowded condition in the N.Y.C. Schools led to an invitation to Mr. Wirt to introduce the Gary plan into several school districts in the boroughs of Bronx and Brooklyn in 1914-15. The experiment aroused bitter opposition on the part of those who suspected it was a sort of "conspiracy" to educate the poorer children for mechanical rather than clerical occupations in the interest of "capitalistic industry," and a year or two later N.Y. returned to the old methods of education.
The plant of the United States Steel Corporation, located between the Grand Calumet River and the Lake, have the most complete system of steel mills west of Pittsburgh. Within the first ten years after the founding of Gary the Steel Corporation had spent $85,000,000 in building furnaces, ovens, various foundries and shops, pumping stations, electric power plants, benzol plants, Portland cement works, and ore docks. Since that time the Steel Corporation's investment here has practically been doubled, and a number of subsidiary companies have built up great industries in Gary. The Universal Portland Cement here, for example, is said to be the largest plant of its kind in the world (daily capacity 30,000 barrels).
The United States Steel Corporation, organized in 1901 with a capitalization of about $1,400,000, was an amalgamation of ten independent companies, of which the Carnegie Steel Co. and the Federal Steel Co. (of which Elbert H. Gary was president) were perhaps the most important. The consolidation was effected under the auspices of the late J. Pierpont Morgan, who negotiated the purchase of Andrew Carnegie's properties for $303,450,000 in 5 per cent steel corporation bonds and $188,556,160 in common and preferred stock. "The Value of the Carnegie Steel Co.," says A. Cotter in The Authentic History of the U.S. Steel Corporation, "was $75,000,000, though as a going concern it was worth $250,000,000. Its earnings in a single year had been as much as $40,000,000." Mr. Carnegie thereupon retired from business.
On Jan. 1, 1920, the corporation had a surplus of $493,048,000, and the book value of the tangible assets was $1,917,730,000. There were then outstanding $568,728,000 in bonds and $868,583,000 in common and preferred stock. In 1919 strikes and other causes reduced the production of finished steel to about 75 per cent of capacity, and at the beginning of 1920 the corporation had unfilled orders amounting to more than 8,000,000 tons. The gross business of the corporation amounted to $1,448,557,835 in 1919 as against $1,744,312,163 the year before. The corporation's income for 1919, less operating expenses and taxes, was in the neighborhood of $150,000,000.
Statistics of production for 1918 and 1919 are given below:
| Production in Tons | |||
| 1919 | 1918 | ||
| Iron ore mined | 25,423,000 | 28,332,000 | |
| Coal | 28,893,000 | 31,748,000 | |
| Pig iron | 13,481,738 | 15,700,561 | |
| Steel ingots | 17,200,000 | 19,583,000 | |
| Finished steel | 11,997,000 | 13,849,483 | |
| Cement | 9,112,000 | 7,287,000 | |
| No. of employees | 252,106 | 268,710 | |
| Total wages | $479,548,040 | $452,663,524 | |