(4 of 6)
In a rise which thus has more of Dale Carnegie than Horatio Alger in it, the next friend whom Ed Stettinius won and influenced was U.S. Steel's Myron C. Taylor, in 1933. U.S. Steel was rich, fat, sprawling and unwieldy. Taylor had three ambitions : to tighten its management, to increase its popularity with the public and to step out. He chose a triumvirate of youngsters to succeed him: Ben Fairless to handle sales and operations; Enders M. Voorhees to oversee finances; and Ed Stettinius to be "front man." Ed began as vice chairman of the finance committee in 1934; by 1938, at the bright young age of 37, he followed Taylor as chairman of the board of giant U.S. Steel. He was now the industry's $100,000-a-year "wonder boy."
The Virginian. He lived well. He bought a Virginia estate in Culpeper County at an auction, without even warning his wife, who like his mother was a Richmond belle. She could hardly have objected when she saw the lovely Greekporticoed house on a hill, and the 650 acres that overlook the Rapidan River. There Stettinius, as a "gentleman farmer," still keeps blooded Guernseys, and sells 1,500 turkeys a year. Amid the lindens and old magnolias of "The Horse Shoe," he rides horseback and romps with his Dalmatian. Pepper (one of whose pups is owned by his friend George Catlett Marshall).
The place houses most of Stettinius'many collections: autographed photographs of his celebrated friends; scrapbooks,autographed volumes, and much of his extensive collection of old vehicles. But Stettinius is not wealthy; most of his income derives from his U.S. Steel days. His father left behind less worldly goods than Morgan partners are popularly presumed to possess.
The Stettinius era in U.S. Steel was a revolutionary period, although Stettinius himself played only a minor part in the revolution. One of his main contributions was to substitute stainless-steel streamlining for the gas-jetted, Victorian corridors of the U.S. Steel headquarters at 71 Broadway. But Little Stet surprised oldtimers when he fought off a 1938 proposal that U.S. Steel cut wages to offset a drop in the price of steel. In a fireside chat, Franklin Roosevelt digressed to congratulate Big Steel on its "statesmanship." And Harry Hopkins, in his steady progress in U.S. society, had met and liked U.S. Steel's Ed Stettinius, had encouraged him to become a member of the Business Advisory Council, the New Deal's little group of "tame capitalists."