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We did not do so until about ten months later when Black made us a proposition on behalf of Charles M. Schwab, who was willing to exchange U. S. Steel Preferred for Fuller Preferred, on even terms. Black strongly recommended it, as he thought we might secure prompter deliveries of our steel, which at that time were very slow and unsatisfactory, if Mr. Schwab were interested in our company. Grant and I immediately disposed of the 2,500 shares that each of us had taken and it was rather amusing to have Stillman ask us in that knowing way of his whether he was justified in concluding from the observations he had made of the sales of U. S. Steel Preferred as recorded on the tape that we had disposed of all our stock. We told him we had. A few days later, at a meeting, he told us with great satisfaction that by letting us rush ours off first, he, through careful selling, secured on an average of three quarters of a point more than we had.

Mr. Schwab became a member of our board, and I had never before met any one who equalled him in that extraordinary capacity of intelligently reading and conclusively analyzing a financial statement at a single glance that seemed hasty and superficial.