Henry Clay Frick

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Lore & Background

Frick was born in West Overton, Westmoreland County, Pennsylvania, a grandson of Abraham Overholt, owner of the Overholt Whiskey distillery. He attended Otterbein College for one year but did not graduate. In 1871, at 21 years old, Frick joined two cousins and a friend in a small partnership, using a beehive oven to turn coal into coke for use in steel manufacturing, and vowed to be a millionaire by the age of thirty. The company was called Frick Coke Company. Thanks to loans from the family of lifelong friend Andrew Mellon, by 1880 Frick bought out the partnership. The company, renamed H. C. Frick & Company, ultimately employed 1,000 workers and controlled 80 percent of the coal output in Pennsylvania. Shortly after marrying Adelaide Howard Childs in 1881, Frick met Andrew Carnegie in New York City while on his honeymoon. This led to a partnership between H. C. Frick & Company and what became the Carnegie Steel Company, ensuring Carnegie's mills had adequate coke supplies. Frick became chairman of the company. After the deadly Homestead strike, Frick and Carnegie came into conflict. Frick tried to sell the company to speculators; Carnegie made multiple attempts to force Frick out without adequate compensation. After Frick sued, they settled. Frick was also a founding member of the South Fork Fishing and Hunting Club. The club made inadequate repairs to the world's largest earthen dam, and fatally lowered it by between 0.6 and 0.9 metres. A screen placed across the spillway to prevent fish from escaping partly blocked it. The dam gave way on May 31, 1889, resulting in the Johnstown Flood, which killed 2,208 people and caused US$17 million in damage. Frick and other club members formed the Pittsburgh Relief Committee and determined never to speak publicly about the club or the flood. Attorneys Philander Knox and James Hay Reed fended off all lawsuits. In 1881, Frick took control of his grandfather's whiskey company, Old Overholt, splitting ownership with Andrew Mellon and Charles W. Mauck. Upon Frick's death in 1919, he left his share to Mellon.

Reader's Guide

Henry Clay Frick's significance lies in his central role in the American steel industry and the lasting consequences of his business practices. As founder of H. C. Frick & Company and chairman of Carnegie Steel, he helped drive the expansion of steel production. His vehement anti-union stance, exemplified by the Homestead Strike of 1892, set a precedent for labor-management conflict. At Homestead, striking workers locked company staff out of the factory and surrounded it with pickets. Frick ordered construction of a solid board fence topped with barbed wire, dubbed 'Fort Frick' by workers. Three hundred Pinkerton detectives assembled on the Davis Island Dam, given Winchester rifles and placed on barges. When they attempted to land, a large mêlée ensued: ten men were killed, nine of them workers, and seventy were injured. The Pinkertons surrendered and left town. At Frick's request, the governor sent 8,000 armed state militia under Major General George R. Snowden, who took control of the plant. Frick issued an ultimatum restating his refusal to speak with union representatives and threatening to evict striking workers from their homes. Among working-class Americans, Frick's actions were condemned as excessive. In 1892, anarchist Alexander Berkman attempted to assassinate Frick, shooting him twice in the neck and stabbing him four times in the leg. Frick was back at work within a week; Berkman was sentenced to 22 years in prison. Negative publicity from the attempt resulted in the collapse of the strike. Frick's involvement in the South Fork Fishing and Hunting Club and the Johnstown Flood illustrates how industrial elites' actions could lead to catastrophic loss of life. The American Society of Civil Engineers launched an investigation, but the report was delayed, subverted, and whitewashed, released two years later. A detailed discussion of the investigation was published in 2018. After retiring, Frick oversaw construction of the Frick Mansion in Manhattan (now a U.S. National Historic Landmark) and bequeathed his collection to create the Frick Collection art museum.

Did You Know?

• Frick vowed to be a millionaire by age thirty, and with loans from Andrew Mellon's family, he bought out his partnership by 1880, with his company ultimately employing 1,000 workers and controlling 80 percent of Pennsylvania's coal output.
• During the Homestead Strike, Frick ordered construction of a solid board fence topped with barbed wire around mill property, which workers dubbed 'Fort Frick'.
• Anarchist Alexander Berkman attempted to assassinate Frick in 1892, shooting him twice in the neck and stabbing him four times in the leg; Frick was back at work within a week.
• The Johnstown Flood on May 31, 1889, caused by alterations to the South Fork Dam by the South Fork Fishing and Hunting Club, killed 2,208 people and caused US$17 million in damage.
• Frick took control of his grandfather's whiskey company, Old Overholt, in 1881, splitting ownership with Andrew Mellon and Charles W. Mauck; upon Frick's death in 1919, he left his share to Mellon.