Business & Finance: Silver Scoop

Silver spade cut lightly into Pittsburgh soil, scooped up a scant quart of mineral-laden earth. Ground had been broken for the $10,000,000 power plant of the Duquesne Light Co. on Brunot’s Island in the Ohio River.* Celebrities and guests boarded the steamship Manitou, chatted away the half-hour trip from the Island back to the city proper. In the earth, the cut remained.

Shallow the cut in the earth; deep the cut in Pittsburgh history. For as the silver spade, dirtied, was carried away, one or another of the watchers recalled these names:

Andrew Carnegie

Philander C. Knox

Andrew W. Mellon

John Pierpont Morgan

David Reed

James Hay Reed

David A. Reed

Every watcher knew that the great power plant will not be called conventionally, “Unit 27” or “Brunot’s Island Plant.” but will bear the name of James Hay Reed. Most watchers, city-conscious, remembered smart James Hay Reed as the Pittsburgh lawyer behind the formation of the U. S. Steel Corp. Young Reed had learned his law in two good schools. As a graduate of the Western University of Pennsylvania (now University of Pittsburgh), he had gone first to the office of his lawyer uncle, famed David Reed of Pittsburgh. Five years of study and he was ready, in 1877, to form a partnership with Philander C. Knox, later U. S. Senator, later Secretary of State.

Andrew Carnegie liked him, admired him. Lawyer Reed became president of the Bessemer & Lake Erie R. R., chairman of the board of Carnegie Steel Co. And when Carnegie dickered with the late, great J. P. Morgan to sink Carnegie Steel into the new U. S. Steel, it was Lawyer Reed who drew the mortgages which secured the bonds. Active to his death, in May 1927, Lawyer Reed saw Pittsburgh steel, Pittsburgh public utilities, grow into mighty units of U. S. industry.

It was fitting, therefore, that when Duquesne Light planned its new development, the company should honor a former official, a famed son of Pittsburgh. Entirely fitting, too, was the invitation to Lawyer Reed’s son to speak at the dedication. Smart son of a smart father, and smart namesake of a smart granduncle, David A. Reed, 47, has many a distinction. He is a close friend of Andrew W. Mellon. He is, at the moment, both senior and junior U. S. Senator from Pennsylvania, because Philadelphia’s Vare has not yet been admitted to the U. S. Senate.

*Ten miles northwest of “The Point,” where the Monongahela and Allegheny rivers meet to form the mighty Ohio, and where Fort Duquesne (1754), became the nub of Pittsburgh, Brunot’s Island is now within the city limits. Pittsburgh’s harbor, crowded with pleasure boats, barges, steamships, extends about 30 miles along its three rivers.