Elbert Gary

Elbert Henry Gary was a lawyer and judge before he was a steel magnate, and he never lost the manner of one. Born on October 8, 1846, near Wheaton, Illinois, he served as a county judge, which is why he was known for the rest of his life simply as “Judge Gary,” long after he had traded the bench for the boardroom.

Building U.S. Steel

Gary helped organize Federal Steel in the 1890s, and in 1901 he joined with financier J. P. Morgan to buy out Andrew Carnegie and consolidate the industry into the United States Steel Corporation, the first billion-dollar company in American history. Gary served as chairman of its board of directors until his death, making him one of the most powerful industrialists of the age. He favored stability over cutthroat competition, hosting the famous “Gary Dinners” where steel executives coordinated to keep prices high, a practice that skirted the edge of antitrust law.

A City From Sand

In 1906, U.S. Steel needed room to build the largest steel plant the world had ever seen. Rather than expand an existing town, the corporation bought a stretch of empty dunes along the southern shore of Lake Michigan and built an entire city from scratch: streets, housing, schools, and water systems, all laid out before a single resident arrived. They named it Gary, Indiana, after the chairman. At its mid-century peak the city held nearly 180,000 people, and the steel it produced built skyscrapers, warships, and automobiles across America.

Legacy

Gary embodied both the ambition and the contradictions of American industrial capitalism. He promoted a paternalistic “welfare capitalism” of company amenities while firmly opposing organized labor, positions that collided in the great steel strike of 1919. He died on August 15, 1927. The corporation he led would dominate the century, and the Gary Works plant still operates today, even as the city that bears his name has weathered the long, painful decline that followed the collapse of American steel.