Background
William Ellis Corey was born on May 4, 1866 in Braddock, Pennsylvania, United States. He was the son of Alfred Adams and Adaline (Fritz) Corey.
William Ellis Corey was born on May 4, 1866 in Braddock, Pennsylvania, United States. He was the son of Alfred Adams and Adaline (Fritz) Corey.
He attended school only until he reached his middle teens. He studied chemistry and metallurgy assiduously and in the evenings attended a business college in Pittsburgh.
After a short service as a grocer's boy at a wage of two dollars and a half a week, he was employed briefly at the age of sixteen at a coal tipple, and then as a laborer at a steel mill in Braddock, where, as he afterwards said, his wages were less than a dollar a day. After a time he found a place as helper in the laboratory of the J. Edgar Thomson Steel Company, then the property of Andrew Carnegie.
Seeking practical experience in steel manufacture, he worked at the same time as puddler, roller, and furnace man. Before he had attained his majority he was a foreman, and at twenty-three he was made superintendent of the plate mill and open-hearth department of the slabbing mill.
In 1893 he became superintendent of the company's armorplate department. While in this position, he developed a better method of armor-making, known to the trade as the Corey reforging process, by which the steel plate was toughened and its resistance to projectiles greatly increased, while the ship's armor was lessened in weight. In 1905 it was said that all foreign countries were then using the Corey-processed plate on their warships. This placed Corey high in his employer's estimation, and he became one of "Carnegie's thirty young partners, " as they were called, promising young men who were being given a small but growing share in the business. A letter from Carnegie to Henry C. Frick, on December 30, 1896, praised Corey and suggested that he be given one-sixth of one percent of the stock of the Carnegie Steel Company. This may seem infinitesimal, but in 1898, when the company's dividends amounted to $21, 000, 000, it would have meant the addition of $35, 000 in dividends to Corey's salary. In 1897, however, the previous year, he had succeeded Charles M. Schwab as general superintendent of the company's mills and received a still larger share in the ownership. In 1901 he again seated himself at Schwab's vacant desk as president of Carnegie Steel, the latter having become the first president of the newly organized United States Steel Corporation. Two years later Corey for the third time succeeded Schwab, becoming at the age of thirty-seven president of America's greatest metal-working corporation.
Corey was now on the verge of becoming a millionaire; he removed his residence to New York, but his changed status presently had its effect upon his family life.
He served as president of the Carnegie Steel Company and U. S. Steel. He served as president and chairman of the board of Midvale Steel & Ordnance Company. He was also a director of the American Bank Note Company, Baldwin Locomotive Works, Hedley Gold Mining Company, Vanadium Corporation of America, Greene Cananea Copper Company, Inspiration Consolidated Copper Company, International Nickel Company, International Motor Truck Company, Montana Power Company, Mesabi Iron Company, and Mechanics & Metals Bank of New York. He died of pneumonia in his sixty-ninth year.
His associate called him an "icicle in business".
He had at seventeen married Laura B. Cook, a miner's daughter, who bore him one son, Alan L. Corey. After a divorce he married Miss Gilman on May 14, 1907. The latter thereafter spent most of her time in France and obtained a divorce in 1923.
