William H. Moore

William Henry ("Judge") Moore (October 28, 1848 – January 11, 1923) was an American attorney and financier. He 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 James Hobart Moore 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. Moore was an avid and expert horseman. Biography He was born on October 20, 1848. Moore's father, Nathaniel Ford Moore, was a prominent banker and merchant in Utica, New York. His mother, Rachel Arvilla Beckwith, was a daughter of George Beckwith, also a banker, a mid-18th century graduate of Yale College, and a member of the original Yale Corporation. After a few years at Amherst College, Moore sought adventure in the American West, where he became known to Sitting Bull. Moore returned to the American Midwest on Sitting Bull's advice. Moore then joined the law firm of Edward Alonzo Small, his future father-in-law, and invited his brother James Hobart to join him in Chicago. After Small's death, Hobart partnered with his brother and married the sister of his sister-in-law. Moore has been described as the prototype of the 1980s leveraged buyout artist. He mocked Andrew Carnegie for knowing how to make steel and nothing about "making securities, preferred and common stocks and bonds" during the initial attempt to take over Carnegie Steel Company. After losing $1.1 million on that 90-day option, a subsequent attempt was successful with the assistance of J.P. Morgan and John D. Rockefeller. U.S. Steel, Big Steel, was born.