The Birmingham age-herald., 1903-05-24

 much bigger the United States Steel cor poration is than anything else ever at tempted in the line of trust finance and how much more widely it's shares are dis tributed than those of any other corpora ton on earth. There is probably not a town of 10000 inhabitants in the whole United States that is without some steel stock The common shares are more widely distributed than the Treferred. The subject is almost inexhaustible.
 Every other man you meet in Wall street has q new arithmetic for United States Steel In this stock market com munity whenever you see two men on the street corner. in a brokerage of flee or on the floor of the stock exchange tiourishing figures in each others faces you may be sure that United States Steel is the matter Of contention. All this has been more or less true since the forma- tion of the st2el combine but the ir- represshle discussion has seemed during the past few weeks to be more active than it formerly was. owing, perhaps. to certain vague apprehenslons of a reaction in the steel trade. The various trade in- eidents that have given rise to these ap- prehensons appear to have been exag- gerated in the Wall street mind. Noth- ing has been adduced to prove conclusive ly that a reaction has begun The de- elining tendency of pig iron prices is not necessarily bearish. A very large per centage of pig iron goes directly into sAeel, and decline in prices for the raw material therefore, need not affect the earnings of the steel corporation. The United States Steel corporation itself is the largest buyer of pig iron in the mar ket, requiring in it's steel plants more of the raw material than it is able to pro- duce for itself The disposition of railroad managers to scale down their improve ment plans is rather significant and ex- tensive improvement operations requiring and enormous quantity of structural steel would seem, in some localities at least to be approaching a limit. but with these and certain other similar tendencies talk en into due account the situation as a whole is still a very comfortable and promising one.
 A depression sooner or later, to be sure is inevitable. and when 1t comes divi- dends on United States steel common cannot be wisely continued. These divi dends amount to more than $2OO00,0O0 a year and there Is that amount of present security therefore behind the dividends on the preferred stock. In other words the earnings of the steel corporation would have to fall off more than $2O 000.000 a year from the present average before the preferred stock dividends would be In jeopardy.
 
 The practical failure of the United States Steel oorporaton's conversion scheme recalls one of the most striking incidents in Mir Morgan's financial ea- reer It occurred many years ago be- fore his prestige in the world of finance was anything near as powerful as it is today. Ills banking house undertook to ell " curitles The matter was freely adver- tised in the financial press and subscrip- tions invited in the usual manner but the announcements were concluded with the extraordinary statement that the sub- scripton book would remain open only twenty-four hours. No such rapid fire business as that had ever before been at tempted in Wall street.
 The custom was to hold subscription books open for weeks at a time and then to postpone their closing for the accom- modaton of tardy subscribers MT. Nor gan's innovation excited a lot of com ment in financial circles and there was great deal of curiosity to see what would come of it. The books opened and closed within twenty-four hours as advertised and the next day it was announced that the issue had been over-subscribed. It did not become known in banking circles
 
 public subscriptions amounted to only one-aftieth of the whole and that rather than postpone the closing of the books MT. Morgan himself subscribed for the other forty-nine flftieths The public of course knew nothing of this inside his- tory. but it was nightly impressed with the announcement that the issue had been over-subscribed within twenty-four hours and when MT. Morgan repeated the eX- pertinent a few months later with anoth- CT issue of securities the public really did over-subscribe the offering and did it in one day.
 MT. 1T. II. Rogers. who is really the leader of what is known as the Standard oil crowd Is expected to return to Wall street next week It is hoped that his re- appearance will mark a change in the Standard Oil crowds present policy of stock market inactivity. MT. Rogers is the manipulating genius of this crowd. His immediate associate in all stock market operations Is William Rockefeller and they have very rich, though limited fol- lowing within the mystic Rockefeller cir cle. John D. Rockefeller, pere, and John D. Rockefeller, Jr., conduct independent operations. The personal activities of the elder Rockefeller in the stock market are very great at times and the Standard | oil crowd does not always participate |