Background
William H. Moore was born on October 25, 1848, in Maine, New York, the son of Nathaniel F. Moore and Rachel Beckwith, of colonial descent. His father was a banker and his mother was the daughter of a banker.
William H. Moore was born on October 25, 1848, in Maine, New York, the son of Nathaniel F. Moore and Rachel Beckwith, of colonial descent. His father was a banker and his mother was the daughter of a banker.
After attending a seminary at Oneida and then the Cortland Academy at Homer, New York, he entered Amherst in 1867 but left in 1870 before graduation because of ill health.
He studied law and was admitted to the bar at Eau Claire, Wisconsin, in 1872, but in the same year went to Chicago, where he entered the offices of Edward A. Small, a leading corporation lawyer.
After a year and a half as managing clerk he was made partner, under the firm name of Small, Burke, and Moore. At Small's death in 1882 he took into partnership his younger brother, James Hobart Moore. They continued in active practice until 1887, and in later life Moore was commonly referred to as "Judge. " He gained wide repute for his skill in the intricacies of corporation law, but gradually the brothers forsook legal practice for corporate promotion and management. They were among the first to recognize the possibilities of industrial mergers in America, and - next to Morgan - perhaps the most important in developing them.
Their first important venture was the reorganization of the Diamond Match Company with an increase of capitalization to $7, 500, 000 and later to $11, 000, 000. Six months later they reorganized a combination of strawboard manufacturers, with a capitalization of $7, 000, 000.
In 1890 they brought several Eastern cracker factories together into the New York Biscuit Company, with a capitalization of $9, 000, 000. But Moore was playing for higher stakes than promotion returns. With other Chicago financiers to back him, he formed a pool to boost and sustain the price of Diamond Match in the Chicago Exchange. There was talk of technical improvements, and of negotiations with various foreign countries for contracts or the establishment of factories. It is not clear how much of this was genuine expectation on Moore's part, and how much unprincipled conjecture or less.
Diamond Match rose from 120 in January 1896 to 248 in May; a similar sympathetic movement took place in New York Biscuit. The plan seems to have been to sustain the prices until some tangible favorable development would enable the holders to "unload" on outsiders at top prices. For six months there was a Diamond Match craze; for weeks almost the entire business of the exchange was in the Moore stocks. But the failure of the mysterious foreign negotiations to eventuate, and the Bryan Populist scare, took the strength out of the boom. Some of the insiders in the pool treacherously began unloading on the Moores. Finally after desperate efforts to bolster their margins - efforts which included the withdrawal of $800, 000 of the match company's funds for that purpose - the Moores gave up, and on the night of August 3 the panicky leaders of the Exchange decided to close it the next morning. The panic was felt a bit on the New York Exchange, and there was even some liquidation in London, while the Chicago Exchange "did not find it convenient" to open for three months. While Moore's losses, which were originally estimated at about eight million, were scaled down to four, they meant a burden of debt and a blow to his prestige. Moore went about imperturbably retrieving his career.
He was forced out of Diamond Match, but so successfully did he in his other venture, with the backing of Armour and Pullman, engineer a price war against the American Biscuit and Manufacturing Company that the only possible result was a merger--the National Biscuit Company, formed in February 1898 with a capital of $55, 000, 000 and a monopoly control of 90 per cent of the cracker-biscuit companies of the country. In its incorporation under the favorable New Jersey laws, in its capitalization not only of tangible assets but also of projected "good-will" and anticipated monopoly profits, and in the large "melon" reserved for promotion, the new company served as a model for subsequent consolidations. It was immediately and immensely successful. Moore's prestige was restored. He was besieged with requests to organize companies "from the marshes of Maine to the Pacific coast", of which he selected only a few and on his own terms.
Turning to the steel industry, he organized in rapid succession (December 1898 - April 1899) the American Tin Plate Company, the National Steel Company, and the American Steel Hoop Company with a total capitalization of $142, 000, 000, of which at least $20, 000, 000 went for promotion. Despite the fact that the stock of all three companies was plentifully watered and represented anticipated profits rather than actual properties, it was eagerly caught up and oversubscribed. The Moores seemed to have found the secret of successful promotion. Wall Street was probably not far wrong in guessing that it lay in the creation of monopolistic control, the contrivance of devices to avoid the operation of the anti-trust laws, the reorganization of production and marketing to effect economies, and the retention of control in the hands of a small group. This group consisted of the two Moores, Daniel G. Reid, and William B. Leeds, the latter two being accessions from the tin-plate industry. Together they formed the "Moore gang, " the "Moore crowd, " the "Moore interests, " and "the Big Four from the Prairies, " as they were variously known on Wall Street, and they continued to work together.
In May 1899 a syndicate headed by Moore agreed to pay $320, 000, 000 for the combined Carnegie-Frick properties. Carnegie insisted that the dealings should be with his partners Henry Clay Frick and Henry Phipps, Jr. , and gave them power of attorney. They joined the syndicate; Moore paid $1, 000, 000 for a ninety days' option and Frick and Phipps added $170, 000. The negotiations seemed to have every chance of success, but the failure of expected financial support to materialize, and the presence on the market of too many "undigested securities" made it impossible for the syndicate to obtain the necessary cash. Carnegie relentlessly refused to extend the option, and kept the option money.
The Moores now turned to other consolidations - that of the American Sheet Steel Company in February 1900, and that of the American Can Company in March 1901. Their companies formed one of the four main groups in the steel industry, the other three being the Carnegie, Morgan, and Rockefeller groups, and when Morgan succeeded in buying out Carnegie and launching the new $1, 400, 000 United States Steel Corporation in 1901, they were included. It was generally believed that the Moore companies, although the most heavily overcapitalized, received the best terms of all. Moore himself was placed on the board of directors of the new corporation, and Reid on the executive committee. But Morgan had no intention of admitting the Moore group to active control: their peculiar type of speculative and predatory activity was too unlike his own conception of business methods. Enormously wealthy now, they turned their money and attention elsewhere. The West had been partitioned into four railroad empires - those of Hill, Harriman, Gould, and Morgan. But the Chicago, Rock Island, & Pacific Railway, as a comparatively minor road, had been left out of the calculations. Its management was conservative and responsible and paid good dividends, but lacked daring and imagination. These the Moores were ready to supply.
After a stock-buying campaign of nine months, during which the stock rose from 80 to 160, Moore forced his way into the control. On June 4, 1901, he and Reid were elected to the board of directors of the Rock Island; on December 12, Leeds was installed in the presidency and James Moore was added to the board of directors; finally on January 30, 1902, the Moore interests placed four of their number on the executive committee of seven, pushing out the Cable interests, and took complete charge of the road. Despite suspicion and hostility on Wall Street, they set out on a brilliant campaign of expansion; technical matters were handled by Reid and matters of financial strategy by Moore himself. In rapid succession they bought up or leased a number of roads, acquiring mileage and terminal facilities that would make of the Rock Island an important transcontinental system.
The stock continued to rise, reaching 200 in July 1902. The capitalization, which had remained at fifty million since 1880, was increased to sixty in July 1901 and to seventy-five in June 1902. Applying to the new field the magnificence of operation that had characterized their steel finance, the Moores announced in August a proposed reorganization of the Rock Island, and a "rearrangement of securities. " Wall Street, accustomed as it was to financial manipulation, was bewildered by the intricacies of the new scheme. Three companies were to be created, in a double-holding company arrangement, and each holder of $100 of stock in the original company was to receive $270 in bonds and stock. To pay interest and dividends on an increase in capitalization of 270% placed an enormous burden upon properties and revenues, especially since the stock of the railway was replaced by the bonds of the operating company, with the consequent substitution of fixed charges for dividends. The financial world felt doubtful about the whole matter, and in Sunday newspapers, magazines, and financial weeklies the proposed reorganization was met with a burst of disfavor. But the plan was pushed through, and Moore went on with his career of conquest.
In the winter of 1902 he added to the Rock Island system the St. Louis & San Francisco Railroad, with a mileage of over 5, 000 miles, and B. F. Yoakum of the latter line was added to the inside group of the Rock Island.
In 1904, to the great chagrin of Harriman, they captured a stock majority in the Chicago & Alton Railroad Company. Moore became known as the "Sphinx of the Rock Island. " He went on his way with a complete indifference to public sentiment, and stood out in the first decade of the new century as the foremost and most daring promoter in American business, just as Morgan was the foremost financier. He had behind him the backing of a dozen banks and trust companies, and was the leader of a group that controlled fifteen thousand miles of railroad.
During the next few years Moore obtained control of the Lehigh Valley Railroad, and with the aid of an English syndicate (Pearson-Farquhar) he began to buy into the Denver & Rio Grande Railroad Company, the Missouri Pacific Railway Company, and the Wabash Railroad Company. But he met with reverses. The St. Louis & San Francisco had turned out to be a distinct loss, and in 1909 it was returned to the original owners with a loss of $20, 000, 000. The Chicago & Alton had also been returned at a loss in 1907. The operations of Moore and the English syndicate were hampered by the tightening of the market, and were finally taken over by Kuhn, Loeb & Company. The holding company scheme of the Rock Island drained the road and placed an incubus on all future holdings. In the end the Rock Island went into receivership. The entire period of Moore control was described in periodicals as "the looting of the Rock Island. " It was pointed out that the stock had declined from $200 in 1902 to $20 in 1914, although the road's earnings had steadily increased. A stockholders' protective committee was formed under N. L. Amster, with Samuel Untermeyer as counsel, the latter declaring that in comparison with the Moore maneuvers "the manipulators of the old Fisk-Gould days were artless children. "
In 1916 the Interstate Commerce Commission issued a drastic report, arraigning Moore, Reid, and the other members of the controlling group, and charging them with deliberate misrepresentation and with looting the railroad. The receivership was ended on June 24, 1917, and the Moore group was ousted from control.
Moore now retired from active business interests. He had built up a stable which was regarded as the equal of any in the turf world, and he had the best string of hackneys in the country. He entered his horses in international competitions and had an absorbing interest in the fashionable Madison Square Garden horse shows. He died on January 11, 1923, of heart disease at his New York home.
William Henry Moore was a well-known attorney and financier, who organized and promoted or sat as a director for several steel companies that were merged with among others the Carnegie Steel Company to create United States Steel. He and his brother helped create the Diamond Match Company, National Biscuit Company, First National Bank, the Delaware, Lackawanna and Western Railroad, the American Can Company, the Lehigh Valley Railroad, the Chicago, Rock Island and Pacific Railroad, the Continental Fire Insurance Company, the Western Union Telegraph Company, the American Cotton Oil Company, and Bankers Trust.
William Henry Moore had tall, thick-set, commanding figure, sure and confident voice, genial and self-sufficient smile. In addition, his own skill as a four-in-hand driver was internationally known.
On October 31, 1878, William H. Moore married Ada W. Small, the daughter of his partner. They had three children
Paul Moore, Sr. was an American businessman.
