THE MAGNIFICENT GALLERY
you've entered is three stories high and one-half mile long. This
was Mr. Trask's breakfast nook. At the turn of the century, Artemus
Gordon Trask was the richest man on six continents and a close personal
friend of the richest man on the seventh, whom he later slew. Trask
built his billion-dollar fortune from an inheritance of just nine
hundred million by cornering the world market on slag. Slag, as
you know, is an essential ingredient in the conversion of naphtha
to coal tar. But Trask was above all an American. "Nothing
gives me a warmer feeling," he wrote, "than seeing a five-year-old
white boy and a little Negro child working side by side in my factories
and slag pits." For more information about Mr. Trask, you might
want to read "American Satan" by Daniel Boorstin, "The
Despot of Slag" by William Manchester and "My Hero"
by Bill Gates.
