The American Steel & Wire Co., of New Jersey, was a consolidation effected in January, 1899, of the majority of the country’s wire mills. It had a rod mill capacity of more than 1,100,000 tons and a wire nail capacity of more than 10,000,000 kegs, or more than 500,000 tons. It also owned extensive ore and coking coal properties. In the first year of its operation the wire company earned nearly $19.00 a share on its common stock after an allowance of $1,200,000 for depreciation, and in 1900 its earnings applicable to the common stock were $4,202,129, or nearly 8½ per cent. on the issue. Its preferred stock was exchanged on a basis of $117.50 U. S. Steel preferred for each $100, and its common stock on the basis of $102.50 of Steel common for each $100 of Steel & Wire. We come now to the largest and most important of the ten companies originally merged into the monster Steel Corporation--the Carnegie Steel Co., the great organization ruled by the Monarch of Steel and turning out from its furnaces and mills practically one fifth of all the steel made in the United States; and, incidentally, pouring undreamed-of wealth into the pockets of Carnegie and his associates. A company that realized profits in 1899 of nearly $24,000,000 and in 1900 of approximately $40,000,000! The Carnegie Steel Co. was a merger of the Carnegie and Frick interests. By its absorption the new corporation secured possession of the greatest steel organization of its time, as well as of the important coke holdings of the H. C. Frick Coke Co.--owning about 40,000 acres of coking coal lands, 11,000 coke ovens, and other property--a controlling interest in the Oliver Mining Co. with its large ore possessions, and the controlling interest in the Pittsburgh, Bessemer & Lake Erie Railroad, not to mention a number of other concerns and interests of less importance. Unlike most of the other merged companies, the Carnegie Steel Co. had all its steel-making plants concentrated in the Pittsburgh district. It was in this locality that Carnegie had built up his great business machine and his fortune. He had never attempted to build elsewhere, with the exception of his threat to erect a tube plant at Conneaut. Carnegie believed in the future of Pittsburgh. And he himself did more than any one else to assure that future. Carnegie it was who had made Pittsburgh the steel centre of the universe. And his plants there, at the time they were taken over by the Corporation, had an annual capacity of some 3,500,000 tons of steel ingots and more than 3,000,000 tons of finished products.