Later Years
After the death of his father in 1890, Morgan gained control of J. S. Morgan & Co (renamed Morgan, Grenfell & Company in 1910). Morgan began conversations with Charles M. Schwab, president of Carnegie Co., and businessman Andrew Carnegie in 1900 with the intention of buying Carnegie's business and several other steel and iron businesses to consolidate them to create the United States Steel Corporation. Carnegie agreed to sell the business to Morgan for $487 million. The deal was closed without lawyers and without a written contract. News of the industrial consolidation arrived to newspapers in mid-January 1901. U.S. Steel was founded later that year and was the first billion-dollar company in the world with an authorized capitalization of $1.4 billion.
Morgan was the founder of the Metropolitan Club of New York and its president from 1891 to 1900. When his friend, Frank King, whom he had proposed, was black-balled by the Union Club because he had done manual labor in his youth, Morgan resigned from the Union Club, and then organized the Metropolitan Club. He donated the land on 5th Avenue and 60th Street at a cost of $125,000, and commanded Stanford White, "Build me a club fit for gentlemen. Forget the expense." Of course he invited King as a charter member.
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Famous quotes containing the word years:
“In the Corner Store, near the village center, hangs a large sign reading: ‘After 40 years of credit business, we have closed our book of Sorrow.’”
—For the State of Maine, U.S. public relief program (1935-1943)
“For four hundred years the blacks of Haiti had yearned for peace. for three hundred years the island was spoken of as a paradise of riches and pleasures, but that was in reference to the whites to whom the spirit of the land gave welcome. Haiti has meant split blood and tears for blacks.”
—Zora Neale Hurston (1891–1960)