GARY, ELBERT HENRY (1846-1927), American jurist and business man, was born on Oct. 8, 1846, and brought up on his father's farm, near Wheaton, Ill. He attended public school and Wheaton college, and studied law in the office of his uncle, Col. Vallette. He graduated in 1867 from the Union College of Law, which became the law department of the University of Chi cago, and later of Northwestern university, Chicago. In 1869 he began his law practice in Chicago. In 1874 he organized the Gary-Wheaton bank, of which he was president. He was elected judge of Du Page county in 1882 and again in 1886. During this period he also frequently held court in Chicago, Cook county, and occasionally presided over important cases in other counties throughout the State of Illinois. He was three times elected presi dent of the town of Wheaton, and on its becoming a city in 1890 served as mayor for two terms.
Until 1898 he practised law in Chicago and became a leader and authority in corporation law and insurance matters. He was president of the Chicago Bar Association in 1893-94. In time he became general counsel and a director in a number of large rail roads, banks and industrial corporations, including steel and wire companies. He early saw the advantages of combination in busi ness. In 1891 he was one of the organizers of the Consolidated Steel and Wire Company. In 1898, upon the organization of the Federal Steel Company, with the financial backing of J. P. Mor gan and Company, he became its first president and retired from legal practice. This company was merged in 1901 in the U.S. Steel Corporation, which was then organized with a capital stock exceeding $1,000,000,000, then by far the largest industrial cor poration in the world. He was elected chairman of the executive committee and later chairman of the board of directors and of the finance committee, and continued to be chief executive officer during 26 years of remarkable development of the steel industry and growth of the corporation.
The steel mills and town of Gary, Ind., were laid out in 1906 by the U.S. Steel Corporation, and later named in his honour. The site was then a waste of sand dunes. Twenty years later Gary had grown, following the plans and large investments of the Steel Corporation, under Judge Gary's direction, to be a beauti ful city of 100,00o people, with a splendid school system and with enormous and varied mills for the manufacture of iron and steel products. Equally important and beneficent developments were similarly carried out under E. H. Gary's leadership in other parts of the country, including those at Birmingham, Ala., Pittsburgh, Pa., and Duluth, Minn. As chairman of the Steel Corporation, he advocated and established many pioneer measures for the wel fare of the employees of industrial corporations, including stock ownership by them and participation in profits, high wages and safe, sanitary and pleasing surroundings. He was always a strong advocate and a firm upholder of the "open shop." During his chairmanship the seven-day week and the 12 hour day for labour in the steel mills were abolished. (J. A. FA.)