Andrew Carnegie, Henry Clay Frick, And The Bitter Partnership That Transformed America

“Meet You In Hell: Andrew Carnegie, Henry Clay Frick, and the Bitter Partnership That Transformed America” written by, Les Standiford, an author and historian, with a B.A in Psychology from Muskingum College and Ph.D. degree in Literature from the University of Utah. Comes forth telling the enthralling story of Andrew Carnegie, Henry Clay Frick, and the bloody Homestead strike of 1892 that transformed their famous partnership into an enraged rivalry. The author’s main thesis is that the Homestead Steal Strike prompted the bloodiest conflict between management and work in United States history which led to the beginning of the end of the Carnegie - Frick partnership.

To begin, Standiford introduces us to the two main protagonists of his book,

He later moved to the United States at a young age of 13, where he worked a multiple of railroad jobs. Through this experience, Carnegie learned the fundamentals of the business world and the railroad industry, in which he came to leave in 1865. By the following decade, the vast majority of Carnegie's time was committed to the steel industry, in which he later used to emerge his own steel company. His business got to be known as the Carnegie Steel Company, revolutionized steel production in the United States. Carnegie fabricated plants around the nation, utilizing innovations and methods that made manufacturing steel easier, quicker and more profitable. Henry Clay Frick was born on December 19, 1849, in West Overton, Pennsylvania. Frick worked as a salesman in one of Pittsburgh's most distinctive stores where he retained proficiency in accounting. Frick started constructing and operating coke ovens in 1870, creating Frick and Company. Success came quick as “by the end of 1873, Frick and Company …owned two hundred coke ovens, selling

Standiford uses the primary source, Illustrated Weekly, a widely held New York publication to characterize Frick as “forceful, self-reliant, and showed determination to carry his point at all hazards” (Standiford, 2005, p. 77). This illustrates Frick’s eagerness as a giant in the coke industry. Another example of Standiford use of sources is in, Giants of Enterprise by Richard S. Tedlow in this work it mentions Carnegies accomplishments due to his “talent, genius idiosyncrasy, and idiocy” (Standiford, 2005, p. 66). These sources help us understand how both men’s differences became their downfall. Nevertheless, Standiford’s use of sources prove his claims involving Frick and Carnegie. The Robber Barons, a novel written by Matthew Josephson, supports Standiford’s claim that Frick and Carnegie were giant American industrialists who held economic power, however, in The Myth of the Robber Barons: A New Look at the Rise of Big Business in America written by Burton W. Folsom expresses that majority of Robber Barons were actually political entrepreneurs, not economic