Consolidation.

On 1 January 1901 Andrew Carnegie agreed to sell his steel company for $480 million to J. Pierpont Morgan, who then consolidated that company with his other steel holdings to form United States Steel Corporation, the first company in history capitalized at more than $1 billion. By comparison all U.S. manufacturing combined had only $9 billion in capitalization at that time, and all federal and state government expenditures totaled $1.66 billion in 1902. Through vertical integration of its holdings, U.S. Steel controlled every step in the steelmaking process from mining coal and ore to the making of nails and steel beams. Bringing about 80 percent of all American steel production under one company, U.S. Steel operated with expenses and revenues greater than all but a few of the world's governments. The deal was one of three hundred major consolidations that reshaped the American economy between 1897 and...