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CHAPTER V. A LEGACY - AMERICAN SHIP BUILDING COMPANY Imagine a shipbuilding corporation valued at $30,000,000, with eleven dry docks located in six different cities spread over an area from Lake Superior to Lakes Michigan and Erie! This is what was accomplished on March 16, 1899! A new business colossus was struggling to be born. It quickly came to dominate the Lakes' traffic. As the demands for bigger and more steel bulk freighters increased, competition among the several shipbuilding concerns on the lakes grew more keen. Finally ships were being built cheaper on the Great Lakes than along the Clyde, the greatest shipbuilding area in the world. This competition, coupled with the great expense of maintaining so many officers in the separate companies, created an impossible cost situation. In June, 1898, J. J. Lynn, representative of the General Electric Company on the lakes, who had gained much insight into business consolidations along the eastern seaboard, contacted Alexander McVittie, president of the Detroit Dry Dock Company. Accordingly a meeting was held at the Waldorf-Astoria Hotel in New York. Present were W. L. Brown (Chicago Ship Building Company), Colgate Hoyt (American Steel Barge Company, and a representative of the John D. Rockefeller interests), James C. Wallace (Cleveland Ship Building Company), W. E. Fitzgerald (Milwaukee Dry Dock Company), Robert L. Ireland (Globe Iron Works), and McVittie. Plans were formulated for a grand consolidation, but everything had to be kept ultra-secret to prevent prices of stock in the individual companies from soaring. The appraising firms of Robert Logan, of Cleveland, expert in shipbuilding affairs, and Robert W. Hunt and Company, of Chicago, engineering experts were contacted. James H. Hoyt of Hoyt, Dustin, and Kelley of Cleveland, worked out the legal details. There was only one indication that such a move was afoot. The American Steel Barge Company of Superior, Wisconsin, separated their vessel interests from their shipbuilding company. Rumors sprang up, but no one could verity them. Considering the number and nature of the businessmen affected by the merger, it is surprising that the only difference of opinion was over management - to avoid high salaries.1 99