We finally obtained the right to take the mine over at any time within six months, and we therefore began the work of examination, which every purchaser of mineral property should make most carefully.  We ran lines across the hillside fifty feet apart, with cross-lines at distances of a hundred feet apart, and at each point of intersection we put a shaft down through the ore.  I believe there were eighty such shafts in all and the ore was analyzed at every few feet of depth, so that before we paid over the hundred thousand dollars asked we knew exactly what there was of ore.  The result hoped for was more than realized.  Through the ability of my cousin and partner, Mr. Lauder, the cost of mining and washing was reduced to a low figure, and the Scotia ore made good all the losses we had incurred in the other mines, paid for itself, and left a profit besides.  In this case, at least, we snatched victory from the jaws of defeat.  We trod upon sure ground with the chemist as our guide.  It will be seen that we were determined to get raw materials and were active in the pursuit.

We had lost and won, but the escapes in business affairs are sometimes very narrow.  Driving with Mr. Phipps from the mills one day we passed the National Trust Company office on Penn Street, Pittsburgh.  I noticed the large gilt letters across the window, “Stockholders individually liable.”  That very morning in looking over a statement of our affairs I had noticed twenty shares “National Trust Company” on the list of assets.  I said to Harry: 

“If this is the concern we own shares in, won’t you please sell them before you return to the office this afternoon?”

He saw no need for haste.  It would be done in good time.

“No, Harry, oblige me by doing it instantly.”

He did so and had it transferred.  Fortunate, indeed, was this, for in a short time the bank failed with an enormous deficit.  My cousin, Mr. Morris, was among the ruined shareholders.  Many others met the same fate.  Times were panicky, and had we been individually liable for all the debts of the National Trust Company our credit would inevitably have been seriously imperiled.  It was a narrow escape.  And with only twenty shares (two thousand dollars’ worth of stock), taken to oblige friends who wished our name on their list of shareholders!  The lesson was not lost.  The sound rule in business is that you may give money freely when you have a surplus, but your name never—­neither as endorser nor as member of a corporation with individual liability.  A trifling investment of a few thousand dollars, a mere trifle—­yes, but a trifle possessed of deadly explosive power.

The rapid substitution of steel for iron in the immediate future had become obvious to us.  Even in our Keystone Bridge Works, steel was being used more and more in place of iron.  King Iron was about to be deposed by the new King Steel, and we were becoming more and more dependent upon it.  We had about concluded in 1886 to build alongside of the Edgar Thomson Mills new works for the manufacture of miscellaneous shapes of steel when it was suggested to us that the five or six leading manufacturers of Pittsburgh, who had combined to build steel mills at Homestead, were willing to sell their mills to us.