borders of a sister state; the Somersworth Bridge and Construction Company and the Gring Steel and Wire Company were to be absorbed.  When all of this should have been accomplished, there would be scarcely a process in the steel industry, from the smelting of the ore to the completion of a bridge, which the Boyne Iron Works could not undertake.  Such was the beginning of the “lateral extension” period.

“Two can play at that game,” Mr. Scherer said.  “And if those fellows could only be content to let well enough alone, to continue buying their crude steel from us, there wouldn’t be any trouble."...

It was evident, however, that he really welcomed the “trouble,” that he was going into battle with enthusiasm.  He had already picked out his points of attack and was marching on them.  Life, for him, would have been a poor thing without new conflicts to absorb his energy; and he had already made of the Boyne Iron Works, with its open-hearth furnaces, a marvel of modern efficiency that had opened the eyes of the Steel world, and had drawn the attention of a Personality in New York,—­a Personality who was one of the new and dominant type that had developed with such amazing rapidity, the banker-dinosaur; preying upon and superseding the industrial-dinosaur, conquering type of the preceding age, builder of the railroads, mills and manufactories.  The banker-dinosaurs, the gigantic ones, were in Wall Street, and strove among themselves for the industrial spoils accumulated by their predecessors.  It was characteristic of these monsters that they never fought in the open unless they were forced to.  Then the earth rocked, huge economic structures tottered and fell, and much dust arose to obscure the vision of smaller creatures, who were bewildered and terrified.  Such disturbances were called “panics,” and were blamed by the newspapers on the Democratic party, or on the reformers who had wantonly assailed established institutions.  These dominant bankers had contrived to gain control of the savings of thousands and thousands of fellow-citizens who had deposited them in banks or paid them into insurance companies, and with the power thus accumulated had sallied forth to capture railroads and industries.  The railroads were the strategic links.  With these in hand, certain favoured industrial concerns could be fed, and others starved into submission.

Adolf Scherer might be said to represent a transitional type.  For he was not only an iron-master who knew every detail of his business, who kept it ahead of the times; he was also a strategist, wise in his generation, making friends with the Railroad while there had yet been time, at length securing rebates and favours.  And when that Railroad (which had been constructed through the enterprise and courage of such men as Nathaniel Durrett) had passed under the control of the banker-personality to whom I have referred, and had become part of a system, Adolf Scherer remained in alliance, and continued to receive favours....  I can well remember the time when the ultimate authority of our Railroad was transferred, quietly, to Wall Street.  Alexander Barbour, its president, had been a great man, but after that he bowed, in certain matters, to a greater one.