e serious and difficult task of wise distribution.
Our profits had reached forty millions of dollars per year and the
prospect of increased earnings before us was amazing. Our successors,
the United States Steel Corporation, soon after the purchase, netted
sixty millions in one year. Had our company continued in business and
adhered to our plans of extension, we figured that seventy millions in
that year might have been earned.

[Footnote 44: _The Gospel of Wealth_ (Century Company, New York, 1900)
contains various magazine articles written between 1886 and 1899 and
published in the _Youth's Companion_, the _Century Magazine_, the
_North American Review_, the _Forum_, the _Contemporary Review_, the
_Fortnightly Review_, the _Nineteenth Century_, and the _Scottish
Leader_. Gladstone asked that the article in the _North American
Review_ be printed in England. It was published in the _Pall Mall
Budget_ and christened the "Gospel of Wealth." Gladstone, Cardinal
Manning, Rev. Hugh Price, and Rev. Dr. Hermann Adler answered it, and
Mr. Carnegie replied to them.]

Steel had ascended the throne and was driving away all inferior
material. It was clearly seen that there was a great future ahead; but
so far as I was concerned I knew the task of distribution before me
would tax me in my old age to the utmost. As usual, Shakespeare had
placed his talismanic touch upon the thought and framed the sentence--

"So distribution should undo excess,
And each man have enough."

At this juncture--that is March, 1901--Mr. Schwab told me Mr. Morgan
had said to him he should really like to know if I wished to retire
from business; if so he thought he could arrange it. He also said he
had consulted our partners and that they were disposed to sell, being
attracted by the terms Mr. Morgan had offered. I told Mr. Schwab that
if my partners were desirous to sell I would concur, and we finally
sold.

[Illustration: CHARLES M. SCHWAB]

There had been so much deception by speculators buying old iron and
steel mills and foisting them upon innocent purchasers at inflated
values--hundred-dollar shares in some cases selling for a trifle--that
I declined to take anything for the common stock. Had I done so, it
would have given me just about one hundred millions more of five per
cent bonds, which Mr. Morgan said afterwards I could have obtained.
Such was the prosperity and such the money value of our steel
business. Events proved I should hav