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.
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