In 1898 Gary, as general counsel for and a director of the Illinois Steel Co., was called on to take charge of the organization of the Federal Steel Co., a merger of the Illinois and other companies. It was he who first suggested this amalgamation. Here he was for the first time brought in touch with the late J. Pierpont Morgan, whose financial assistance in the formation of the new company was being sought. The business ability of the lawyer so impressed the New York banker that he and others interested with him insisted that Gary should head Federal Steel. The future head of United States Steel hesitated, for his practice was lucrative and he had become financially independent, but he finally yielded and gave up his legal business, then located at Chicago, and moved to New York, devoting himself thenceforward entirely to steel. Speaking of the reasons for Morgan’s choice in this matter an old business associate of the Judge’s said: “Legal judgment and business acumen are seldom found in combination. Gary had both these qualities and a higher degree than any man I have ever known. And it was this happy combination that impressed the great banker.” But more than this, Gary was, and is, a statesman in business. He has the broad vision that distinguishes the statesman from the mere politician and the really great business leader from the average run of executives. He saw beyond immediate effects into the distant future and based his course on this vision. In writing of the vast majority of men who have achieved success in one line or another it is easy to select some prominent characteristic which particularly distinguishes them. But there are a few who owe their eminence to a variety of well-blended attributes, and Gary is one of these chosen few. This renders it difficult for the chronicler to decide where the heaviest stress should be laid. A prominent Chicago lawyer who in his youth had worked for years under Gary was appealed to in this regard. And this is what he said: “Judge Gary had the ability and courage to, whenever necessary, abandon the old precedents which, by reason of changed times and conditions, had been relegated to the scrap heap of progress. He was one of the few attorneys who could, with almost prophetic vision, see the positions which the courts of appeal must eventually be obliged to take with reference to questions of public policy and the great industrial organizations just then in their infancy.” The lawyer then went on to tell an anecdote illustrating the fact that the Judge though a member of the legal profession did not believe in recourse to litigation when it could be avoided. He said: