Judge Gary

Hundreds of young men are in U. S. law schools for no reason but the old saying, "A little law never hurt a man in business." Last week the outstanding examplar of a very sound old saying that one is, finished his long career --Judge Elbert H. Gary died in Manhattan at 81, the, as yet, unretired board chairman of the largest corporation in the world U. S. steel. He read law in his Uncle Henry's (Colonel Henry Valetted) office at Naperville, Ill., after returning from volunteer service in the Civil War.

They sent him to the Union College of Law (later part of Northwestern University) in Chicago and he led his class. The Illinois Superior Court engaged him as deputy clerk. He was chief clerk within seven months but soon accepted space and a smaller salary in his uncle's office to practice privately. In boisterous young communities the demand for good lawyers is second only to the demand for doctors and, perhaps, masons and carpenters. When the Chicago fire wiped out the property of others it only ignited the reputation of Elbert Gary as one of the shrewdest of the shrewd at winning cases in the confusion of the rebuilding city. Behind his shrewdness lay industry. His cross-examinations had the steady light of careful preparation rather than inspirational brilliance. In 1882, only thirteen years after he began private practice, his friends made him County Judge of Dupage County. After two four-year terms he refused a third carrying his title back to his own practice, which in 1852 began to be identified with the steel industry. How he conducted the incorporation of the American Steel & Wire Co. in a way that impressed the elder J. P. Morgan, how Mr. Morgan immediately engaged him to amalgamate and head the Federal Steel Corp., how Judge Gary kept insisting that a still bigger corporation must be formed to compete with England and Germany, how Mr. Morgan bought out Andrew Carnegie and put Charles M. Schwab, a Carnegie man, in the presidency and Judge Gary in the executive chair of the first billion-dollar trust is familiar history.

Judge Gary's rise in the world was complete by 1901. Thereafter his vertical progress became lateral. A trust-building period was just closing in 1901. A "trust-busting" period was to follow. Judge Gary met Theodore Roosevelt in 1902 and, when the investigation of the U. S. Steel instigated by Mr. Roosevelt was completed in 1920, it was apparent that not even Mr. Roosevelt had worked harder than Judge Gary against the predatory tendencies of the trusts.

Employe stock ownership, voluntary compensation for injuries, "safety first", employe welfare--in the form of schools, playgrounds, clubs, gardens, pensions -- and abolition of the twelve-hour day were policies embraced by Judge Gary before others forced them upon him. He read the times aright, saw that industry would be humanized and might better prosper by humanizing itself. In 1918 Judge Gary refused to receive Samuel Gompers resenting labor's attempt to unionize the steel industry for ends which the steel industry already had in view. A strike was called but failed. Judge Gary had proved himself as good a labor organizer as the unions had; again proved himself the next man's equal at improving his own ethics. Stockholders liked him. Besides paying them their regular dividends Judge Gary for years promised them a fat melon-cutting.

When the melon came last Christmas it measured forty percent. Investors appreciated him. His business predictions based on his own key industry were invariably worded as cheerfully as possible. Biographers praised him after they had penetrated the colorless exterior of a man who, to promote the impersonal ends of a vast and complex organization, submerged his own personality. After he moved to Manhattan he collected art, raised fine cattle, went to the opera. But just before he left Wheaton, Ill., to be head of the Federal Corp., a friend found him sitting with his hunting coat, bag and gun in his lap. "I will never use them again," he said.

Successor. Wall Street doubted that a Dupont--either T. Coleman Dupont or Pierre Samuel Dupont --whose company has bought much U. S. Steel stock (TIME, Aug. 8) would succeed Judge Gary as U. S. Steel Chairman. Whom had Judge Gary recommended? No one publicly and explicitly, though theory mongers found it exciting to point out an article only last month in Collier's Weekly wherein Judge Gary saluted Calvin Coolidge and said he would have been an outstanding success in any business.