United States Steel: A Corporation with a SoulCotter, Arundel
History
United States Steel: A Corporation with a Soul
Cotter, Arundel
United States Steel Corporation
He evidently saw that the very life of the Corporation depended upon
this; and time has proved the accuracy of his judgment. It is safe to
say that had the Corporation misused its power it would have been
picked out many years before it was for legal attack, and the attack
would have been successful. The Corporation would not have been in
existence to-day.
To the lay mind, it is passing strange that the so-called “Gary
dinners,” which provided the principal example of the Corporation’s
attitude toward its competitors and the public, should have been
made the subject for special attack by the Stanley Committee and the
Government’s attorneys, and should have been criticized by the Lower
Court. However, the Court’s criticism appears to have been based
largely upon a technicality, as the judges in their opinion practically
admitted that there was no intent shown on the part of Judge Gary or
his associates to restrain trade by these functions. In fact, the
criticism seems rather to have been based on certain meetings held in
Pittsburgh as a result of these dinners, but at which meetings the head
of the Corporation was not present.
Judge Woolley, who rendered a separate opinion, said of these dinners:
The first Gary dinner was given on November 20, 1907, to meet an
unquestioned exigency arising out of the panic then existing....
The dinner was given in order to devise ways and means to prevent
calamity to the [steel] industry. Ways and means were found which,
no doubt, contributed greatly in preventing disaster not alone for
the producers of steel but also to those intermediate consumers
who were carrying large and costly supplies. The ways and means
consisted then of nothing more than the urgent request of a strong
man that in the stress of panic all should keep their heads, and
avoid the consequence of reckless cutting of prices. In this the
others acquiesced, and in the light of the emergency then existing
and of the disaster averted, I am of opinion that the purpose and
conduct of those who participated in the first Gary dinner were not
unlawful, improper, or questionable.
In view of the notoriety that these functions had received and of the
use that had been made of them against the Corporation, it may be
worth while to devote a little time to them here.
The Gary dinners! Feasts that will rank in the business history of
the United States as did the feasts of Lucullus in epicureanism or
Cleopatra’s dinners to Antony in romance. Occasions where the heads
of the steel companies of the United States gathered at the festive
board with amity and good will, to consider and discuss a situation
that threatened not themselves alone, but the country at large; where
these Titans of industry, only a few years before mortal enemies, met
as friends and openly and without fear discussed with one another the
intimate details of their businesses.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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