Charles Schwab, no relation to Charles R Schwab, the man that started the finance company we know today, started out in Pennsylvania as a stake driver for Andrew Carnegie’s steel company. By the time he was 35, he was president of the company.
A dynamic risk-taker and partier, Schwab negotiated with JP Morgan, Carnegie and Elbert Gary secretly to form United States Steel. Morgan combined Federal Steel with Carnegie and the group created the first billion dollar company ever.
He didn’t like Morgan or Gary that much and he left USS to go to Bethlehem Shipbuilding company, where he turned it into the largest independent steel supplier in the world.
During both World Wars, Bethlehem manufactured all the armor plate and heavy guns for the military. After the first World War, Schwab, like many business moguls, was branded as a profiteer. He got cleared of wrongdoing, but his reputation remained tarnished.
He always seemed ready to scheme, during WWI he snuck his goods through Canada to work around neutrality issues, for example. Later, it is rumored he gave a $200,000 gift to the mistress of Grand Duke Alexis of Russia. This supposedly gave him the gift of supplying all the steel for the construction of the Trans-Siberian Railroad.
Schwab enjoyed his millions. He had a 75-room palace built on the Upper West Side of New York, later Mayor La Guardia refused it as a gift home because it was too decadent. Today it has been torn down and is an apartment block. He also had a 45 room estate in Pennsylvania, which is now part of St. Francis University.
He liked fast cars, lots of women and gambling. (His wife did not appreciate any of those qualities) He had frittered away a lot of his fortune when the Crash of ’29 came to finish it off. Charles Schwab’s rags to riches story went back to rags as he finished his life in a small apartment.
Had he been around a few years later, he would have witnessed Bethlehem Steel getting another war contract for WWII munitions, restoring his fortune.