Portrait of Henry Clay Frick

Henry Clay Frick made his fortune manufacturing Western Pennsylvania’s coal into coke, a crucial fuel for steel blast furnaces. In 1881, he joined forces with Andrew Carnegie, who soon became the majority stockholder in the H. C. Frick Coke company. Notoriously anti-labor, Frick served as the counter to Carnegie’s carefully cultivated pro-labor image. He became chairman of Carnegie Steel in 1889 and his hard-liner stance during the disastrous Homestead Steel Strike in 1892 earned him the enmity of some in the region that lasts to this day.