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Steel Titan: The Life of Charles M. Schwab
Business genius and hedonist, Charles Schwab entered the steel industry as an unskilled laborer and within twenty years advanced to the presidency of Carnegie Steel. He later became the first president of U.S. Steel and then founder of Bethlehem Steel. His was one of the most spectacular and curious success stories in an era of great industrial giants. How did Schwab progress from day laborer to titan of industry? Why did Andrew Carnegie and J.P. Morgan select him to manage their multmillion-dollar enterprises? And how did he forfeit their confidence and lose the preseidency of U.S. Steel? Drawing upon previously undiscovered sources, Robert Hessen answers these questions in the first biography of Schwab.
376 pages, Paperback
First published November 13, 1975
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About the author
Robert Hessen
40 books2 followersRobert Hessen was an American economic and business historian. He was a professor at the Graduate School of Business at Stanford University and a senior research fellow at Stanford's Hoover Institution. He was an Objectivist and authored several books, analyzing business and economic issues from an Objectivist perspective.
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Displaying 1 - 2 of 2 reviews
November 27, 2019
I frist came across Charles Schwab when reading a biography of Andrew Carnegie. So I searched for a suitable biography and up came Hessen‘s book.
Albeit very interesting, it wasn‘t at all what I expected.
Very well researched the book is more a history of the US steel industry than a biography of Charles Schwab. The overall story concerns him,
of course. But its main focus rests with Schwab‘s business ventures.
Unfortunatelly it’s impossible to see behind this business personality.
When you want to know how the US steel industry worked in the 19th century, Hessen delivers a very well executed book with interesting backround that is good to read.
Albeit very interesting, it wasn‘t at all what I expected.
Very well researched the book is more a history of the US steel industry than a biography of Charles Schwab. The overall story concerns him,
of course. But its main focus rests with Schwab‘s business ventures.
Unfortunatelly it’s impossible to see behind this business personality.
When you want to know how the US steel industry worked in the 19th century, Hessen delivers a very well executed book with interesting backround that is good to read.
August 29, 2021
While most biographies of Gilded Age tycoons, or of tycoons of any age for that matter, deal with independent entrepreneurs who started their own business and grew their fortunes, this one deals with that odd type of mogul who worked his way up through the ranks of a big corporation and came to run it. Born in 1862 from second-generation, devout German Catholic parents, who were moderately prosperous mill owners in the small town of Loretto, Pennsylvania, he graduated from a Catholic high school with a bit of engineering knowledge and a love of music and showmanship, and soon moved to Pittsburgh. He started at Andrew Carnegie's Edgar Thomson Steel Works as a rod boy measuring out a new furnance. He soon caught the eye of "Captain" Bill Jones, and then began reporting personally to Carnegie (who loved his musical ability) and, somehow, by age 25, was running the Homestead Iron Works. Ten years later, he was running the entire Carnegie Steel Company.
Schwab really entered the public eye in 1901, when the Carnegie mills became the centerpiece of the US Steel corporation, the largest corporation on Earth, and Schwab became its President. What few knew was that he was largely a powerless figurehead in a position where the board and the company's many subsidiaries had control. He lost the job after a gambling scandal at Monte Carlo, a few ill-chosen speeches, and, most importantly, his involvement in the purchase out of his own fortune of Bethlehem Steel, which became part of the short-lived US Shipbuilding Corporation, the latter of which Schwab supposedly helped bankrupt when he demanded increasing collateral for his part. In his second act, he then used the untested "Grey beam" or "Bethlehem beam" for structural steel to grow the Bethlehem company and turn the former gun forger into the second-biggest steel corporation in the country.
This book probably ensured is own obscurity when the author thanked the work of Ayn Rand in the introduction, and then quoted Ludwig Von Mises in the text, but such ideology does not color the work. The book takes a careful look at the times Schwab attempted to create steel pools to raise prices. It absolves him of fraud in the 1893 Navy armor plate scandal, while still noting his disingenuousness to government inspectors at the time. It also notes Schwab's successful management of the Emergency Fleet Corporation for the government in World War I, while again noting that he helped organized a steel pool to keep prices up. This is not a hagiography, and it presents Schwab warts and all.
Schwab was a man who liked living high on the hog, with several mistresses and regular gambling bouts. The combination of the those expenses and the Great Depression meant he died in debt in 1939. That also meant he did not leave massive bequests or grants which kept his name in the public eye. Still, he was one of the most consequential steel men in American history, at a time when that industry was the most important one on Earth. This fine biography, with barely a misstep or wasted page, does him justice.
Schwab really entered the public eye in 1901, when the Carnegie mills became the centerpiece of the US Steel corporation, the largest corporation on Earth, and Schwab became its President. What few knew was that he was largely a powerless figurehead in a position where the board and the company's many subsidiaries had control. He lost the job after a gambling scandal at Monte Carlo, a few ill-chosen speeches, and, most importantly, his involvement in the purchase out of his own fortune of Bethlehem Steel, which became part of the short-lived US Shipbuilding Corporation, the latter of which Schwab supposedly helped bankrupt when he demanded increasing collateral for his part. In his second act, he then used the untested "Grey beam" or "Bethlehem beam" for structural steel to grow the Bethlehem company and turn the former gun forger into the second-biggest steel corporation in the country.
This book probably ensured is own obscurity when the author thanked the work of Ayn Rand in the introduction, and then quoted Ludwig Von Mises in the text, but such ideology does not color the work. The book takes a careful look at the times Schwab attempted to create steel pools to raise prices. It absolves him of fraud in the 1893 Navy armor plate scandal, while still noting his disingenuousness to government inspectors at the time. It also notes Schwab's successful management of the Emergency Fleet Corporation for the government in World War I, while again noting that he helped organized a steel pool to keep prices up. This is not a hagiography, and it presents Schwab warts and all.
Schwab was a man who liked living high on the hog, with several mistresses and regular gambling bouts. The combination of the those expenses and the Great Depression meant he died in debt in 1939. That also meant he did not leave massive bequests or grants which kept his name in the public eye. Still, he was one of the most consequential steel men in American history, at a time when that industry was the most important one on Earth. This fine biography, with barely a misstep or wasted page, does him justice.
Displaying 1 - 2 of 2 reviews