I want to place the selected column(s) from all the files (e.g. col 2 from all files together) from a directory, not just two files....

I tried this command: paste | awk '{print $2}' *
But I got the output one after the other in a new file.

$2 from 1st file
$2 from 2nd file
.............. so on..

But what I need is $2 from 1st file <tab> $2 from 2nd file<tab> ..............so on....

I have thousands of files with me All are similar files. They contains 34 columns and 1000 rows. Please help me...

Finally I need to plot one column from one file against the other columns from other files depending on the column header.