While trying to solve a family mystery, Dave Dyer uncovered a massive
stock market scandal that had been forgotten by history. His great uncle
Clayton Pickard vanished in 1923, and, in the process of researching
him, the author found a collection of thousands of original documents
and photos from Clayton's employer, the L. R. Steel Company. The
documents, unopened since 1923, told the fascinating story of a
visionary entrepreneur operating in the boom-town environment of
Buffalo.
Steel's is about the rise and fall of the retail empire created by
Leonard Rambler Steel. Like a Silicon Valley tycoon, he sprang into new
ventures with enthusiasm and foresight. At its height, his chain store
operation had 75 stores spread over 61 cities in the United States and
Canada. He hired women in management and elderly people in his sales
force, and anticipated some of the retail models that are used today by
global companies such as Ikea and Wal-Mart. His most remarkable insight
was to recognize the marketing potential of the new medium of silent
film. In 1921 he created a 3-hour film about his life and company that
was screened for free all over North America. The movie, a precursor to
today's infomercial, attracted prospective buyers for the 5,000
salespeople who sold the company's stock.
Almost 60,000 people bought the stock, three times the number who bought
into Charles Ponzi's better-known scheme. Eventually, his big ideas
became too grandiose, such as developing Niagara Falls into a permanent
international exhibition dedicated to commerce and technology, and the
investors lost all their money when the company collapsed in 1923 amid
fraud charges.
With no other published accounts of this scandal, the story told in
Steel's was doomed to be lost forever until the author discovered the
document trove that brought it back to life. The remarkable creativity
and foresight of the founder makes for a fascinating tale of failure by
someone who had what it takes to succeed. The L. R. Steel Company could
have been Wal-Mart, but ended up like Enron.