Daniel G. Reid

Who was Daniel G. Reid?

Daniel Gray Reid was an American industrialist and philanthropist known as the "Tinplate King".

He was born August 1858 in Richmond, Indiana, and is a son of Daniel and Anna Reid. Reid was educated in the public schools of Richmond. His father died when he was 15 years old and he was reared by his mother. At the age of seventeen he entered the Second National Bank as messenger boy, obtained his business training there and gradually won promotion until he was made teller, which position he resigned in 1895. In 1892, he became interested in the American Tin Plate Company, owners of an extensive plant at Elwood, Indiana. He and his partner, William B. Leeds, another Richmond native, bought the tin plate mill, with which he eventually combined every tin plate company in the country to form the American Tin Plate Company, with Reid as president. In 1901, J. P. Morgan included the tinplate trust in the giant steel trust, United States Steel Corporation, and reportedly paid $18 million for the company and Reid became the director. He bought control of the American Can Company and the Chicago, Rock Island & Pacific Railroad. In 1912, he organized the Tobacco Products Corporation with Henry Clay Frick, John D. Ryan and others.