steel--iron ore, coal, and limestone. All these territories have
their personal romances and their heroes, many of them quite as
picturesque as those of the Pittsburgh group.

It is doubtful indeed if American industry presents any figure
quite as astonishing and variegated as that of John W. Gates, the
man who educated farmers all over the world to the use of wire
fencing. Half charlatan, half enthusiast, speculator, gambler, a
man who created great enterprises and who also destroyed them, at
times an upbuilding force and at other times a sinister
influence, Gates completely typified a period in American history
that, along with much that was heroic and splendid, had much also
that was grotesque and sordid. The opera-bouffe performance that
laid the foundations of Gates's great industry was in every way
characteristic of this period. In 1871 Gates, then a clerk in a
hardware store at twenty-five dollars a week, made his first
attempt to sell barbed wire in the great cattle countries of the
southwestern States. When the cattle men in Texas first saw this
barbed wire, they ridiculed the idea that it could ever hold
their steers. Gates selected a plaza in San Antonio, fenced it in
with his new product, and invited the enemies to bring along
their wildest specimens About thirty of Texas' most ferocious
cattle, placed within the enclosure, spent a whole afternoon
plunging at the barbs in a useless and tormenting attempt to
escape. This spectacular demonstration of efficiency launched
Gates fairly upon his career. He immediately began to sell his
new fencing on an enormous scale; in a few years the whole world
was demanding it, and it has become, as recent events have
disclosed, a particularly formidable munition of war. The
American Steel and Wire Company, one of the greatest of American