TODAY’S AMERICA OWES MUCH
TO DU PAGE’S JOHN W. GATES

Among the nation builders in America’s coming of age period at the beginning of this century, DuPage County’s John W. Gates was unique. In terms of building new strength for the America of today, he was outstanding.

John Gates was the only one among them ... the Rockefellers, Morgans, Vanderbilts and others ... to massively upgrade both the nation’s agricultural and industrial potential. The hallmark of this man was his genius for introducing new ideas to expand several vital sectors of future American productivity, particularly in agriculture, steel and oil. The other titans of this rough and tumble period worked chiefly with other men’s ideas. John Gates worked largely with his own.

Adding to an element of drama to the Gates story is the almost mystical way in which the careers of these former DuPage County farm boys, John W. Gates and Elbert H. Gary, were intertwined. They were born on almost adjoining Gary’s Mill farms, Gary in 1846 and Gates in 1855, just south of West Chicago which did not exist at the time Gary was born.

They were very different. Gary was a brilliant student, outstanding in his profession from the beginning and a church and community leader. Gates was a poor student, a pleasure seeking youth who failed miserably in his first business venture largely because he did not discipline himself to work. Finally, Gates found himself and became the nation’s outstanding marketer of the new product, barbed wire. He turned to Gary, an outstanding corporate lawyer, for help in working out the biggest business venture Gates had undertaken to that time. When John Gates came to see Judge Gary, it marked the beginning of a strange collaboration that came to be of interest not only to DuPage County but to the entire nation as well.

In this cooperation between two men who could hardly describe themselves as "friends," they had a leading role in moving the United States into the position of being the most remarkable nation in all the story of mankind. Four new industrial developments that blossomed after the American Civil War ... railroads, steel, oil and motor cars, each of them highly interdependent … turned America into the super power of this 20^th Century. Gates and Gary had major roles in shaping three of these industries.

Gates was the son of Mary Warne and Asel Gates. His mother was the daughter of John Warne of the Warrenville community. Like the Wheatons and Garys, Warne had come from New England and, as had Erastus Gary, stopped on the way in Michigan to teach school in the community that would later provide the campus for today’s University of Michigan.

Mary and Asel were married by the Rev. Charles Wesley Gary. The wedding took place in the Gary’s Mill school which on Sunday served as the Gary’s Mill Methodist Church. The school is still standing near the intersection of Roosevelt Road and State Route 59.

Along with his two brothers, George and Gilbert, John Gates received his education at the Gary’s Mill rural school. Farm work did not appeal to John Gates. He spent all the time he could in Turner’s Junction. In the school year of 1872-73, he even attended Northwestern College in Naperville to study bookkeeping and business law.

About this time he met, ardently courted and a year later married Dellora Baker, the attractive daughter of the St. Charles farmer, Edward H. Baker, whose farmstead was located across the county line in Kane County a short distance northwest of St. Charles. Marriage for John Gates was the turning point in his life. Dellora’s judgment and encouragement contributed greatly to his success. They were a devoted couple. When they were married by the Rev. Mr. Foster, Gates paid the minister five dollars, not a small sum for such services in 1874.

About a year before Gates’ death, and thirty-five years after the marriage, Gates met the Rev. Foster in Seattle, Washington. In what amounted to a penetrating commentary on his marriage to Dellora Baker, Gates told the minister that he had not been paid nearly enough and handed him a hundred dollar bill. This was considered a large sum for even such an important gratuity in 1910.

When John W. Gates died in 1911, before there was either income or estate taxes, and his will was probated in court at Geneva, Illinois, it was found that he had left Dellora one of the greatest liquid inheritances, without restrictions or conditions of any kind, ever left an American widow.

Gates’ father and his father-in-law set him up in the hardware store business in Turner’s Junction. The business was conducted under the name, John W. Gates & Co. Tt was while he was in business in Turner’s Junction that his son, Charles, was born.

Although the hardware store did well for a time, the management and constant attention required by the store did not appeal to young Gates. It was soon obvious to his young wife that operating a hardware store in Turner’s Junction would not be her husband’s permanent work.

The year 1875, months after his marriage, brought a turn around for John Gates. His wife suggested that it would be best for Gates to close out his store business and look for another job. Furthermore, his wife had some thoughts about getting another job.

The decision to close the store came at a fortunate moment. Barbed wire had shortly before been invented at DeKalb, 25 miles to the west of Gary’s Mill. Dellora Gates had relatives with connections in the new business. Gates went to DeKalb, applied for a job and got it. He was given the State of Texas for a territory with San Antonio as his headquarters.

Gates immediately revealed a remarkable ability as a master of what today would be called creative sales engineering. This unusual ability accounted for his career and made possible the attainment of goals beyond the reach of most mortals. Barbed wire had been on the Texas scene for sometime but it was not possible to convince Texas ranchers and their cowboys that the slender strands of steel wire with its braided-in barbs could hold Texas Longhorns, animals that often weighed two tons and could run with the speed of a horse.

Johnny Gates arrived in Texas with little more than pocket money. Then he made a bold move, one that shaped his future. Gates went directly to the San Antonio mayor and city council and obtained permission to fence the town square with his new barbed wire and put on a demonstration to convince ranchers that the new fencing could contain Longhorn cattle.

The demonstration was billed as entertainment. It was so successful that Gates in 90 days sold all the barbed wire that his fin-n in DeKalb could manufacture that year and perhaps the next. He also quickly became, in the process, a young man with a very substantial income. Despite all that followed in his often turbulent career he was never poor again.

Gates became a producer of barbed wire as well as a marketer. Soon he was known as the "Barbed Wire King." He sensed that barbed wire and other new uses for steel were creating shortages of steel. He sketched in his mind a new kind of steel production facility that would place under one organization every step from iron mine to processed steel. Judge Gary worked it out with House of Morgan financing. It was the United States Steel Corporation, America’s first billion dollar organization. There was one disappointment. J. Pierpont Morgan would not permit Gates to be an official.

But John Gates did not pause. He built an eight-hundred mile railroad, the Kansas City and Southern, the first rail line from Kansas City to the Gulf of Mexico. He developed a new patented steel production process so superior that U. S. Steel had to buy the rights. But it was in 1901 that John Gates’ genius for winning where others had failed reached its zenith.

Oil wildcatters at Beaumont were sure that there was oil to be had for the drilling in the community. Three promoters had exhausted their funds without their well, Spindletop, producing a drop of oil. After an explanation of what had been done and why they thought there was oil further down, Gates backed a new effort at Spindletop.

Two months later on January 10, 1901, Spindletop began spouting one hundred thousand barrels a day and introduced the era of oil in the United States. In the first year the Spindletop production increased the nation’s oil output by one-sixth. Gates organized the Texas Oil Company, later renamed Texaco, to market the Spindletop oil. The first oil pipeline in the world was built to carry the oil to a port on the Gulf of Mexico where Gates built special port facilities and oceangoing tankers to carry Spindletop’s oil to East Coast ports, Europe and South America.

There was another side to this man who adored his family and besides building steel plants or railroads supported good causes such as the then new Training School for Boys at St. Charles. This side of the man made him more famous than any of the great financiers who always feared and often opposed him. He could work twelve to eighteen hours without a break. Then instead of retiring to sleep, he preferred going to the races and bet on the horses or have a high stakes game of cards with close friends. After such a period of recreation, he could return to his office and continue to work.

At times he wagered tremendous amounts of money at the races. In 1900 with friends he attended the famous steeplechase race in England and acknowledged having bet a million dollars on an assortment of horses. An English newspaper writer referred to him as Bet-a-Million Gates. The American press picked up the reference. Gates was infuriated, but the nickname has made him a special figure in American history.

A quarter of a century after his death, Hollywood prepared a script for a motion picture spectacular to depict the highlights of his life to be released under the title, "BET-A-MILLION." Bing Crosby had agreed to play the part of Gates. His family in St. Charles refused to give the necessary permission so the movie was never produced, but a point was made. No one ever knocked down doors to make a Hollywood movie twenty-five years later about J. Pierpont Morgan or John D. Rockefeller.

John Gates’ widow, Dellora, lived only a few years after her famous husband’s death, spending much of her time in St. Charles or in a large house Gates had built for her in West Chicago that still stands. On her death she left most of her husband’s millions to her namesake niece, Dellora Angell.

In his will Gates had made his "favorite niece" wealthy with a one hundred million dollar bequest. She was ten years old then. When she was fifteen she inherited the bulk of the Gates fortune on the death of her aunt. She married Lester J. Norris of St. Charles. Together they distributed millions to hospitals, community organizations and charities.

In June, 1980, Dellora A. Norris died and left an estate valued at sixty million. The largest single asset was forty-two million in Texaco stock. Spindletop, America’s most famous gusher, is still producing.