Charles Michael Schwab (1862–1939) was an American steel magnate. He was a protégé of the steel baron-turned-philanthropist Andrew Carnegie. During a long and successful career, Schwab built his Bethlehem Steel Corporation into America’s second-largest steel producer and one of the world’s most prominent businesses.
Born in Williamsburg, Pennsylvania, Schwab started his career as a laborer in Carnegie’s Edgar Thomson Steel Works. By age 19, Schwab was the assistant manager of the steel factory. When an accident killed the factory superintendent in 1887, Andrew Carnegie appointed the 25-year-old Schwab as the manager of the Thomson Works.
Thanks to his exceptional ability to cozy up to people and facilitate harmonious working relationships, Schwab rapidly rose up the ranks of the Carnegie steel empire. At 35, Schwab became president of the Carnegie Steel Company with an annual compensation exceeding $1 million (worth $30 million today.)
When Carnegie Steel evolved into U.S. Steel, Schwab became its first president. He then transitioned to the Bethlehem Shipbuilding and Steel Company and transformed it into the largest independent steel producer in the world. Bethlehem was a significant supplier for the Allied Forces during World War I.
Schwab’s excellent people skills and management methods are extolled in How to Win Friends & Influence People, Dale Carnegie’s masterful guidebook on people skills. Schwab’s other accomplishments include the institution of a profit-sharing plan for Bethlehem Steel employees and the creation of a leadership hierarchy that allowed middle managers more autonomy and higher pay.
Schwab retired a multimillionaire as the single largest owner of Bethlehem Steel. Nevertheless, he died bankrupt thanks to his unsound investments outside the steel industry before the 1929 stock market crash and his extravagant lifestyle that included high-stakes gambling in Monte Carlo, Monaco.
More: Wikipedia • READ: Works by Charles M. Schwab
The difference between getting somewhere and nowhere is the courage to make an early start. The fellow who sits still and does just what he is told will never be told to do big things.
—Charles M. Schwab
All successful employers are stalking men who will do the unusual, men who think, men who attract attention by performing more than is expected of them.
—Charles M. Schwab
Topics: Achievement, Excellence
Keeping a little ahead of conditions is one of the secrets of business; the trailer seldom goes far.
—Charles M. Schwab
Topics: Business
A man who trims himself to suit everybody will soon whittle himself away.
—Charles M. Schwab
Topics: Confidence
A man who trims himself to suit everybody will soon whittle himself away.
—Charles M. Schwab
Topics: Opinions, Opinion
The man who has done his best has done everything.
—Charles M. Schwab
Topics: Success, Effort
I quickly learned that if I kept at it and plowed right through the rejections, I would eventually get somebody to buy my wares.
—Charles M. Schwab
A man to carry on a successful business must have imagination. He must see things as in a vision, a dream of the whole thing.
—Charles M. Schwab
Topics: Imagination, Vision, Prophecy
There is nothing else that so kills the ambitions of a person as criticism from superiors. I never criticize anyone. I believe in giving a person incentive to work. So I am anxious to praise but loath to find fault. If I like anything, I am hearty in my appreciation and lavish in my praise.
—Charles M. Schwab
Everyone’s got it in him, if he’ll only make up his mind and stick at it. None of us is born with a stop-valve on his powers or with a set limit to his capacities, There’s no limit possible to the expansion of each one of us.
—Charles M. Schwab
Topics: Doing Your Best, Possibilities, Control, Potential
Be friends with everybody. When you have friends you will know there is somebody who will stand by you. You know the old saying, that if you have a single enemy you will find him everywhere. It doesn’t pay to make enemies. Lead the life that will make you kindly and friendly to every one about you, and you will be surprised what a happy life you will live.
—Charles M. Schwab
Topics: Kindness, Happiness, Friendship
The best place to succeed is where you are with what you have.
—Charles M. Schwab
Topics: Best, Secrets of Success, Success
I consider my ability to arouse enthusiasm among men the greatest asset I possess. The way to develop the best that is in a man is by appreciation and encouragement.
—Charles M. Schwab
Topics: Enthusiasm, Appreciation
The hardest struggle of all is to be something different from what the average man is.
—Charles M. Schwab
Topics: Adversity
Personality is to a man what perfume is to a flower.
—Charles M. Schwab
Topics: Personality, One liners
I have probably purchased fifty ‘hot tips’ in my career, maybe even more. When I put them all together, I know I am a net loser.
—Charles M. Schwab
When a man has put a limit on what he will do, he has put a limit on what he can do.
—Charles M. Schwab
Topics: Potential
The man who does not work for the love of work but only for money is not likely to make money nor to find much fun in life.
—Charles M. Schwab
Topics: Passion, Work
A man can succeed at almost anything for which he has unlimited enthusiasm.
—Charles M. Schwab
Topics: Passion, Enthusiasm, Success
I was once ask if a big business man ever reached his objective. I replied that if a man ever reached his objective he was not a big business man.
—Charles M. Schwab
Topics: Vision, Prophecy
The first essential in a boy’s career is to find out what he’s fitted for, what he’s most capable of doing and doing with a relish.
—Charles M. Schwab
Topics: Career, Enjoyment
In my wide association in life, meeting with many and great men in various parts of the world, I have yet to find the man, however great or exalted his station, who did not do better work and put forth greater effort under a spirit of approval than he would ever do under a spirit of criticism.
—Charles M. Schwab
Topics: Criticism, Praise, Critics
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