66 WILLIAM FRANKLIN WILLOUGHBY 



marked by the formation of the great national companies, or 

 so-called iron and steel trusts, through the merging of hitherto 

 independent concerns. In rapid succession there were organ- 

 ized the Federal Steel company, the National Tube company, 

 the American Steel and Wire company, the American Tin 

 Plate company, the American Steel Hoop company, and the 

 American Sheet Steel company, to mention only those which 

 afterwards went into the United States Steel corporation, 

 each with its forty, fifty, or hundred millions of capital. Now 

 the characteristic of this period of transformation was that, 

 in the formation of these huge concerns, the motive was the 

 union of likes; that is, the bringing together under the same 

 management of plants manufacturing the same products. It 

 was as if a vessel of several classes of dissimilar particles had 

 been suddenly agitated, and the members of each class had, 

 on the instant, rushed together to form single independent 

 homogeneous aggregations. There was thus constituted a 

 great company for the manufacture of tin plate, another for 

 the making of steel hoops and related articles, another for 

 sheet steel, etc. 



For a time it seemed, to the outside public at least, that 

 this was the final step in the evolution through which the 

 industry was passing, and that the immediate future would be 

 devoted to the strengthening of the position obtained by each 

 of the companies. But no sooner was this movement accom- 

 plished than new forces were seen to be at work. As field 

 after field came under the central or unified form of organiza- 

 tion, the companies in which this organization was vested 

 came more and more into direct contact with, and depend- 

 ence upon, each other. The finished product of the one was 

 the raw material of the other. One company was the chief 

 purchaser of the products of another, taking in cases a quar- 

 ter, a half, or even a greater proportion of the entire output of 

 the latter. One company was thus in a position powerfully to 

 control the operations of the others. In numberless ways this 

 dependence of one field upon another led to friction and diffi- 

 culties whose seriousness was proportionate to the size of the 

 companies concerned. 



