Gary’s ambition, like Carnegie’s, knew no bounds; but where the little Scotch ironmaster worked to make the steel industry an empire over which he should reign supreme, Gary dreamed of an immense Republic of Steel. Where Carnegie sought to unify the control of the steel trade and bring it into his own hands, Gary sought to make the industry one owned by the people, and particularly by the workers. Where Carnegie stopped at the ocean and gave his attention to world business only at times when overproduction at home compelled him to seek foreign markets temporarily, Gary sought to establish a world-wide and permanent market for the product of the blast furnaces and rolling mills of the United States. And the history of the United States Steel Corporation is the story of how Gary made his dream come true. But the Federal Steel Company, its president soon found, was not an instrument big enough or suitable for the carrying out of his plans. In the first place, its plants were located at too great a distance from the Atlantic seaboard to render an invasion of foreign markets feasible. Freight rates to the ocean were prohibitive. And another hindrance was encountered in the severe ups and downs to which the steel trade in this country was subject. He saw that, if his dreams were ever to be made realities, the Federal Steel Company must be enlarged and expanded, must provide itself with plants able to export steel in competition with Great Britain and Germany, the countries which ruled the international markets, and must so strongly entrench itself that it would not be too greatly affected by periods of stress. One man there was who could provide the wherewithal for the expansion which the head of the Federal Steel Company considered necessary. This was the late J. Pierpont Morgan. To Morgan, then, Gary took his plans, but the banker was not enthusiastic. Perhaps he saw that many steel concerns were not making money and feared to put so large an amount of capital as was required into the venture; perhaps other motives governed him; but, whatever his reasons, the great financier hesitated, would not permit himself to be convinced. Again and again Gary tried to persuade Morgan, but in vain, and at length Gary, satisfied that he must seek other means to his end, turned his attention toward raising the necessary capital elsewhere. He had already prevailed upon his fellow directors of the Federal Steel Company to pledge subscriptions to a large sum for the purchase or erection of new plants when circumstances played into his hands. Morgan decided to give his backing to the formation of a giant steel merger on the lines Gary had proposed.