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Quoting Richelieu and Shakespeare, Carnegie coached his 37-year-old protégé Charles M. Schwab on how to handle Morgan. In December 1900 at a private dinner, with Morgan among the guests, Schwab made a speech on the vast opportunities that lay ahead of American business. He said: "For instance, there is in the U.S. no one plant making steel cars exclusively. Instead of having one mill make ten, 20 or 50 products, why not have one mill make one product, and that continuously?" Morgan's imagination caught fire. He cornered the willing Schwab after dinner. Morgan, with Elbert Gary as his chief negotiator, set about the making of a great new steel combine.
The last crucial holdout was John W. ("Bet-a-Million") Gates and his American Steel & Wire Co. When Gates refused his final offer, Gary asked Morgan to come into the room. Morgan, his eyes blazing with resolution, his nose with acne rosacea, pounded a table: "I am going to leave this building in ten minutes. If by that time you have not accepted our offer, the matter will be closed." Gates scratched his head awhile, and then gave up. Gary described Morgan's reaction. " 'Now,' he said, 'let's go home.' We went up on the Elevated to 50th Street, where his old electric car met him. He was like a boy going home from a football game." Carnegie & friends got $492,556,766.
Later (the story goes), he tried to strike up a shipboard conversation with Morgan. "I sold out to you too cheaply," he said. "You'd have given me a hundred million more."
"Yes, I'd have given you a hundred million more," said Morgan, turning away, "if only to be rid of you."
Brother Gompers Defines an Era. Tough men, the lords of American Big Business; the power they wielded had begun to worry thoughtful citizens. Some proposed that the government curb "the trusts." Others feared that legislation would exchange one tyranny for a worse. Arthur Twining Hadley, Greek scholar and president of Yale, had a quaint solution. In January 1900, Hadley proposed to deal with the business monopolist by an old Greek remedy—ostracism.
Cried Hadley: "Don't invite [the monopolist] to dinner with you. Don't let him come to your house." This solution was widely ridiculed in the press. Harper's Weekly pointed out that the monopolists could enjoy an active social life merely by inviting one another to dinner. The jokesters would have been surprised by the outcome. Big Businessmen began to feel more & more keenly the reproaches of fellow citizens; they began to worry over something called "bad public relations." By 1922 Hadley was able to say that social pressure rather than law' had changed business conduct.
Samuel Gompers in 1900 was forging another weapon to counteract the power of Big Business. His American Federation of Labor was growing. At the turn of the century, men were beginning to ask Gompers what his goal was. Where would he stop? Gompers had a prophetic answer which he was soon to deliver in a speech at Portland, Ore.: "We want more, we demand more, and when we get that more, we shall insist upon again more and more and even more, until we get the full fruition of our labor."