Mr. Curry had distinguished himself by this time in his management of the Lucy Furnaces, and he took his place among the partners, sharing equally with the others.  There is no way of making a business successful that can vie with the policy of promoting those who render exceptional service.  We finally converted the firm of Carnegie, McCandless & Co. into the Edgar Thomson Steel Company, and included my brother and Mr. Phipps, both of whom had declined at first to go into the steel business with their too enterprising senior.  But when I showed them the earnings for the first year and told them if they did not get into steel they would find themselves in the wrong boat, they both reconsidered and came with us.  It was fortunate for them as for us.

My experience has been that no partnership of new men gathered promiscuously from various fields can prove a good working organization as at first constituted.  Changes are required.  Our Edgar Thomson Steel Company was no exception to this rule.  Even before we began to make rails, Mr. Coleman became dissatisfied with the management of a railway official who had come to us with a great and deserved reputation for method and ability.  I had, therefore, to take over Mr. Coleman’s interest.  It was not long, however, before we found that his judgment was correct.  The new man had been a railway auditor, and was excellent in accounts, but it was unjust to expect him, or any other office man, to be able to step into manufacturing and be successful from the start.  He had neither the knowledge nor the training for this new work.  This does not mean that he was not a splendid auditor.  It was our own blunder in expecting the impossible.

The mills were at last about ready to begin[34] and an organization the auditor proposed was laid before me for approval.  I found he had divided the works into two departments and had given control of one to Mr. Stevenson, a Scotsman who afterwards made a fine record as a manufacturer, and control of the other to a Mr. Jones.  Nothing, I am certain, ever affected the success of the steel company more than the decision which I gave upon that proposal.  Upon no account could two men be in the same works with equal authority.  An army with two commanders-in-chief, a ship with two captains, could not fare more disastrously than a manufacturing concern with two men in command upon the same ground, even though in two different departments.  I said: 

“This will not do.  I do not know Mr. Stevenson, nor do I know Mr. Jones, but one or the other must be made captain and he alone must report to you.”

[Footnote 34:  The steel-rail mills were ready and rails were rolled in 1874.]

The decision fell upon Mr. Jones and in this way we obtained “The Captain,” who afterward made his name famous wherever the manufacture of Bessemer steel is known.

The Captain was then quite young, spare and active, bearing traces of his Welsh descent even in his stature, for he was quite short.  He came to us as a two-dollar-a-day mechanic from the neighboring works at Johnstown.  We soon saw that he was a character.  Every movement told it.  He had volunteered as a private during the Civil War and carried himself so finely that he became captain of a company which was never known to flinch.  Much of the success of the Edgar Thomson Works belongs to this man.