Last of the Reid-Moore companies to be organized was the American Sheet Steel Co., chartered in February, 1900. This company acquired 164 sheet mills, nineteen puddling furnaces, and a number of open-hearth furnaces and bar mills. It had a capacity of about half a million tons. Its earnings, from the time it began business to April 1, 1901, amounted to $1,676,480 and its surplus on the latter date was $705,757. Its stock was exchanged for Steel Corporation securities on the same basis as those of the Steel Hoop Company. The National Tube Co., organized in June, 1899, was a merger of thirteen smaller concerns having an aggregate capacity of about 850,000 tons of steel-wrought tubing. Its principal plants were located in the Pittsburgh district. In the year 1900 the company reported net profits after depreciation of more than $14,600,000, or about 35 per cent. on its preferred capital stock. National Tube preferred stockholders exchanged their holdings at the rate of $100 for $125 of U. S. Steel preferred, while the junior stockholders received $8.80 in preferred and $125 in common stock of the corporation for each $100 they held. The Federal Steel Co., second only in size and importance to the Carnegie Steel Co., was chartered late in 1898, as a merger of the Illinois Steel Co., Minnesota Iron Co., Minnesota Steamship Company, Mount Pleasant Coke Company, Lorain Steel Co., Elgin, Joliet & Eastern Railway Co., and the Johnson Co. of Pennsylvania. The steel companies it controlled brought to it some of the best-equipped steel mills, manufacturing various products, in the country, as well as a number of ore vessels and the principal ownership of the Duluth & Iron Range R. R. Its earnings in 1899 were approximately $9,100,000, or about 17 per cent. of its preferred stock, and in 1900, $11,722,000, or about 22 per cent. Federal Steel preferred stockholders received new preferred stock at the rate of $110 for each $100, and the common stock was exchanged at the rate of $100 of Federal common for $4.00 of preferred and $107.50 of the common stock of the U. S. Steel Corporation. The Lake Superior Iron Mines, dominated by the Standard Oil interests, was formed in 1893. It was merely an ore company and had ore reserves, owned or leased, estimated at nearly 400,000,000 tons. The company also owned the Duluth, Missabe & Northern Railroad, and it was affiliated with the Bessemer Steamship Co., afterward purchased by the Steel Corporation. The earnings of the Lake Superior company were enormous, having been nearly 58 per cent. on its capital in 1900. For each $100 of its stock--there was only one class--$135 each of preferred and common stock of the U. S. Steel Corporation were exchanged.