g enterprise had paid the
Carnegie group profits aggregating $133,000,000, profits which, in the
closing years of the century, had increased at a stupendous rate. In
1898 Carnegie and his associates had divided $11,500,000, in 1899
their earnings had grown to $25,000,000, and in 1900 the aggregate had
suddenly jumped to $40,000,000. Of this latter sum Carnegie received
$25,000,000, Phipps $5,500,000, Frick $2,600,000, and Schwab $1,300,000.
And Carnegie's little group could see no limit to the growth of their
business and the expansion of their personal fortunes. Yet at that very
moment Carnegie was planning to play the part of a Charles V with the
large empire which he had pieced together--to abdicate his throne,
retire from business life, and spend his remaining days in quiet.

Many influences were impelling him to this decision. His triumph,
stupendous as it had been, also had had its alloy of sorrow. Indeed
this little Scotsman, now at the crowning of his glory, was one of the
loneliest figures in the world. Practically all the forty men with
whom he had been closely associated had vanished from the scene. He had
quarreled with his playmate and lifelong partner, Henry Phipps, and was
in the worst possible business and personal relations with Frick. He
had no son to carry on his work. He had become greatly interested in
his philanthropies, and he had declared that the man who died rich died
disgraced. Moreover, new influences were rising in the steel trade with
which Carnegie had little sympathy. Its national capital seemed to be
shifting from Pittsburgh to Wall Street. New men who knew nothing
about steel but who possessed an intimate acquaintance with stocks and
bonds--J. Pierpont Morgan, George W. Perkins, and their associates--were
branching out as controllers of large steel interests. Carnegie had no
interest in Wall Street; he has declared that he never speculated in his
life and that he would immediately dissociate himself from any partner
who would do so. This Wall Street coterie, in the years from 1898 to
1900, had made several large combinations in the steel trade. That was
the era when the trust mania had gained possession of the American mind
and when its worst features displayed themselves. The Federal Steel
Company, the American Bridge Company, the American Steel and Wire, the
National Tube Company, all representing the assembling of large works
which had been engaged as rivals in similar enterprises, we