The Ely miner. [volume] (Ely, Minn.) 1895-1986, 1906-11-30
BIGGEST OPERATOR.
United States Steel Corporation
Described in Munseys.

From Herbert n. Casson's Noyem-
bea article in the Munsey Magazine
on THE Romance of Steel and Iron
in America" the following is taken:
THE first annual report of the I'm
tied States Steel Corporation was the
most remarkable financial document
that had ever been known in the long
history of commerce.
Looked more like magazine than
an annual report, with its siXtyfour
pages and siXty-three illustrations of
furnaces and steel mills. And 1t was
sent to nearly sixty thousand stock
holderS-a larger circulation than
many magazine possesses, its fig
ures were those of an empire, rather
than of private company of Ameri-
can business men. Its revenue of five
hundred and sixty million dollars was
equal to that of the ten Kingdoms of
Spain, Portugal, Holland, Roumania,
Sweden, Norway, Greece, Denmark,
Siam and Turkey. The receipts Of
the United States ITSELF for 1902, ex-
elusive OF the postal business, am
|-ounted to only two million more than
those of the United States Steel Cor
poration.
This wonderful corporation was
not a'bank, yet it had more than fifty
M Ilinn in 70 np
than the deposits in any one of the
New York savings banks except FIVE,
or any ofthe national or state banks
except seven.
st was not a railroad, yet it oper-
ated five large railway systems. with
nearly five hundred locomotives and
more than twenty-six thousand cars.
And these were not freight roads
merely, as eighty-three of the cars
were for passengers:
1T was not marine corporation,
yet it possessed fleet of more than a
hundred vessels, many of them the
best of their kind, whose ca rnings for
year furnished nine million dollar
item to the report.
without counting its sixteen docks
its seventeen thousand coke ovens, its
two hundred square-miles of gas land,
its hundred thousand acres of coal
| land and its sixty ore mines in the
Lake Superior region, this corporation
reported itself as being the owner of
sixteen hundred manufacturing plants
| ssThe grand total of assets-no hui
man mind can transform this line of
figures into an idea-was 81, 546,544,
234.65.
| Roughly speaking, labor got one
hundred and twenty million dollars
for the years work; the stockholders,
fifty-six millions; the machinery, inn
prOvements and depreciation, forty
five millions: and Andrew Carnegie,
the grand old pensioner, got eighteen
millions. including the three millions
set apart as a sinking fund for the
payment of his bonds IN the year 1862.
"The 16S, l27 workmenJ received an
average of SIT apiece; the stockhold-
ers averaged abont thousand dol
lars. Sc far as profits were concerned.
the little Scot, in spite of his abdica-
tion, still lowered aboye the newcom-
ers.
1.-THE net profit of The corporation
for the year were more than humid
red and thirty-three million dollars.
Out of this, twenty-five millions were
taken for special Improvements which
were thought to be advisable though
not strictly necessary. Because Of
the use of. this generic word ''improv-
ments,'' it is impossible to tell the
exact percentage Of profits. Just how
much of the forty-fye millions that
come under this head was spent for
the actual enrichment of the property
ami How much of it went for political
purposes, or to cover up mistakes and
losses, no one outside of the corpora
ton can tell. There is no cause for