Charles M. Schwab

from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Charles Michael Schwab

Charles Michael Schwab (born February 18, 1862 in Williamsburg , Pennsylvania , † October 18, 1939 in London , United Kingdom ) was an American industrialist and steel magnat . He died bankrupt and was buried in Loretto , Pennsylvania.

Life

Schwab was born the son of John and Pauline Farabaugh Schwab, a German-born Roman Catholic family from Williamsburg, Pennsylvania, but grew up in Loretto, which he considered his hometown throughout his life. He attended Saint Francis College , but left it after two years to look for a job in Pittsburgh .

He began at Andrew Carnegie's steel mills and rose to become President of the Carnegie Steel Company in 1897 at the age of 35 . In 1901 he led the secret negotiations for the takeover of Carnegie Steel by a group of New York financiers influenced by JP Morgan . After the acquisition, Schwab became the first President of the US Steel Corporation, which was formed from Carnegie's previous holdings.

In Schwab's view, US Steel was too cumbersome and too inefficient. After several clashes with JP Morgan and Elbert Gary , he resigned from his post in 1903 and joined the Bethlehem Steel Company , which under his direction became the largest independent steel producer .

Part of the success of Bethlehem Steel was based on the development of a precursor to the I-profile . This product went into series production in 1908. It revolutionized steel construction and made the age of skyscrapers possible .

“ I've been thinking the whole thing through, and if we go bankrupt we're going to go bankrupt on a large scale. "

The success of this daring step proved Schwab right, and the company developed into the second largest steel producer in the world.

In 1910, Schwab ended the Bethlehem Steel Strike by calling the newly formed Pennsylvania State Police . Schwab managed to keep the unions out of the company. It was not until 1941, two years after his death, that the workers organized unionized.

Schwab eventually moved to New York City and settled on the Upper West Side , which was then viewed as the "wrong" side of Central Park . "Riverside" was the most ambitious private home that was built in New York City. The construction of the 75-room building cost 7 million US dollars at the time and combined architectural details of three French castles on one city block. After Schwab's death, New York Mayor Fiorello LaGuardia rejected the proposal to make Schwab's home the mayor's residence because he thought the building was too spacious. It was eventually demolished and replaced with an apartment block.

Schwab also owned a 44-room country house on a four square kilometer property in Loretto called "Immergrün". The property was characterized by the magnificent gardens and a nine-hole golf course.

Schwab was considered a risk taker and was also controversial. In the early years of World War I , he circumvented the laws that required the United States to be neutral by smuggling goods through Canada . After the USA entered the war, he was accused of being a " war profiteer " and later rehabilitated. His lucrative steel supply contract for the construction of the Trans-Siberian Railway was signed after he gave the lover of the Russian Grand Duke Alexei Alexandrovich Romanov a necklace valued at US $ 200,000. Thomas Edison once called him a "master hustler".

Schwab led a life in the fast lane that was characterized by lavish parties, gambling for large sums of money, and a series of love affairs that resulted in at least one illegitimate child. He finally became an internationally recognized celebrity when he broke the bank of the Monte Carlo Casino in January 1901 . He undertook his travels in his own railroad car, which he named “Loretto” and which cost around 100,000 US dollars at the time. The car is now in a railroad museum in Altoona , Pennsylvania. Even before the Great Depression , Schwab had spent a large part of his fortune, which was estimated at 25–40 million US dollars. (Based on today's purchasing power, that's between $ 275 million and $ 440 million.) His affairs and illegitimate child put a strain on his relationship with his wife.

The Black Friday of 1929 completed what the years of gluttony had begun. He spent the rest of his life in a small apartment. His creditors took him to "Riverside", for which he could no longer pay taxes. He had offered to sell the property at a great loss, but no one was interested.

At the time of his death in 1939, his stake in Bethlehem Steel was practically worthless because the company was bankrupt and Schwab was more than $ 300,000 in debt. A few years later, Bethlehem Steel was overwhelmed with orders for war material and again profitable.

portrait

The Swiss-born American artist Adolfo Müller-Ury (1862–1947) painted a portrait of Schwab in 1903, which was for years in the Jessica Dragonette Collection in the American Heritage Center of the University of Wyoming in Laramie, but now the American National Portrait Gallery in Washington DC. Müller-Ury also painted Schwab's nephews around the same time.

Quotes

"You can mobilize the best forces in a person through recognition and encouragement".

swell

  • Robert Hessen: Steel titan: the life of Charles M. Schwab , Pittsburgh, Pa .: University of Pittsburgh Press. 1990.
  • James H. Bridge: The Inside History of the Carnegie Steel Company . 1903.
  • Ida M. Tarbell : The Life of Elbert H. Gary . 1925.
  • Arundel Cotter: The Story of Bethlehem Steel . 1916.
  • Arundel Cotter: United States Steel: A Corporation with a Soul . 1921
  • Burton J. Hendrick: The Life of Andrew Carnegie . 2 volumes. 1932; New edition 1969.
  • Stewart H. Holbrook: Age of the Moguls . 1953.
  • Joseph Frazier Wall: Andrew Carnegie . 1970.
  • Louis M. Hacker : The World of Andrew Carnegie . 1968.
  • Burton W. Folsom, Jr .: The Myth of the Robber Barons . Young America.
  • Napoleon Hill : Think and get rich . 1937.

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ "I've thought the whole thing over and if we are going bust, we will go bust big."
  2. ^ New York Architecture Images - Charles M. Schwab Mansion
  3. ^ Robert Hessen: Steel Titan: The Life of Charles M. Schwab. Retrieved March 5, 2013 .
  4. ^ North Carolina Transportation Museum: Rail Equipment 1

Web links

Commons : Charles M. Schwab  - Collection of Images
personal data
SURNAME Schwab, Charles M.
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Schwab, Charles Michael
BRIEF DESCRIPTION American industrialist
DATE OF BIRTH February 18, 1862
PLACE OF BIRTH Williamsburg , Pennsylvania
DATE OF DEATH October 18, 1939
Place of death London , UK