Word: weir
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...tendency of empire builders is to grow cautious with size and success. But Ernest Tener Weir, who built his National Steel Corp. into a $675 million empire, never seemed to have a cautious moment. In defense of the free-enterprising society that gave him his chance, he loudly fought all attempts to restrict its liberties. He staunchly resisted the U.S. Government, unions, even his fellow steelmasters. Praised and berated by liberals and conservatives alike, Ernest Weir was a non-organization man, a symbol of rugged individualism...
...pardonably proud of the Dickensian way he had come; he had read David Copper field 101 times. The son of Scotch-Irish immigrants, Weir quit school at 15 to support his widowed mother, worked as a $3-a-week office boy for a Pittsburgh wire company, later said he did "not consider it a handicap for a boy in his teens to have to go to work. Being forced to earn one's living strengthens character, equips for bigger battles." By 1905 Weir was manager of a U.S. Steel Corp. plant; at 30 he bought a wheezing West Virginia...
Often paying himself less than his men, young Steelmaster Weir painfully rebuilt the plant, put up another on farm land along the Ohio River near Wheeling. There he laid out streets, schools, homes for a company town called Weirton, which grew into a city...
...Black. By 1929 Weirton Steel Co. was among the world's biggest independent tinplate producers, but Weir was "tired of sawing wood in West Virginia." He put through a merger with Detroit's Great Lakes Steel Corp. and subsidiaries of Cleveland's M. A. Hanna Co. to form the $120 million National Steel Corp...
...National Steel's boss. Weir set out to finance its lively ambitions. "I wanted $40 million at a time when that money looked like the national debt. I got it, not from Wall Street, but from Main Street." Instead of turning, like other steelmen, to J.P. Morgan & Co., Weir sold bonds to the public. With new equipment, Weir operated on a stubbornly independent policy of "no order too little, none too big." He supplied Detroit automakers on a booming scale that yielded National Steel a profit during every Depression year, made it the only U.S. steel company...