During the previous year, however, Wick and Campbell pooled resources with other local investors who wanted to maintain significant levels of local ownership within the city's manufacturing sector. The group established the Youngstown Sheet and Tube Company with $600,000 in capital and eventually turned it into one of the nation's most important steel producers. Wick, who emerged as the steel company's first president in 1900, appointed Campbell as secretary. Two years later, Campbell rose to the position of vice president; and in 1904, he began his long tenure as president of Youngstown Sheet and Tube. Wick, meanwhile, was forced to take an extended leave of absence because of health problems, though he returned to the company a few years before his death.