Flash: The coke king is (still) dead
It would be remiss of me, while on the topic of the Connellsville Coke Region, to fail to mention the centennial of the death of Henry Clay Frick.
Frick, a native West Overton, was a little shy of 70 when he died at his palatial Fifth Avenue home in New York City.
Having amassed one of the country’s great fortunes, by December 1919 Frick was comfortably retired and busy with his art collection, which would soon open for public inspection. Unaccountably, he had become a patrician, a patron of his golf club, a charitable benefactor.
While active in business, Frick brooked no opposition, from either his business partners (Andrew Carnegie) or the workers in his employ. He was tough, unyielding, and (largely) unforgiving.
The foundation of Frick’s tremendous wealth rested on his holdings in western Pennsylvania, really in two counties, Westmoreland and Fayette.
Under his guidance the firm bearing his name became the world’s largest producer of coke, an ingredient essential to the manufacture of steel. The H.C. Frick Coal and Coke Company operated, at its height, 22,000 coke ovens with the capacity to produce 25,000 tons of coke a day.
Elbert Gary, president of U.S. Steel, lauded his friend’s natural ability, wide experience, unfailing courage, and fixed determination.” Frick’s loss of a six-year-old daughter, Martha, years before affected him deeply, Gary told the press, though he kept his grief “well hidden from the public.”
The reviews of Frick’s life in western Pennsylvania were not so kind. “Sullen, reserved and forceful in his dealings with labor, Frick early acquired the hatred of the masses,” wrote John O’Donnell, editor of the Uniontown Daily News Standard.
The New York Times said Frick “could fight bravely, endure suffering calmly and regard with tolerance even the anarchist … who tried to assassinate him.”
O’Donnell claimed that Frick’s “wealth and scretiveness made anarchists and Bolsheviks out of mild-mannered men.”
Frick and Germany’s Kaiser Wilhelm, late of World War I, “were responsible for much of the misery in the world,” O’Donnell wrote. Frick’s reputation might be redeemed if he gave away most of his fortune. “Otherwise, his memory will be forgotten before his grave is closed.”
Days later the contents of Frick’s will were revealed. O’Donnell’s snarly attitude evaporated almost immediately. Because of Frick, Uniontown Hospital was due a half-million dollars. “Here in Uniontown we all know how pitifully inadequate our own hospital is to meet the demands that are made upon it.” Frick’s gift would go a long way in making the hospital a fine, modern facility.
In addition to Uniontown, Frick set aside money for the hospitals in Connellsville, Mount Pleasant, Greensburg, Braddock, and Homestead, and Mercy, Children’s, and Allegheny General in Pittsburgh. Frick also provided for the city of Pittsburgh, Harvard, Princeton, MIT, and the Society of Lying-in Hospital in New York City. The city of Broadway and the Bowery would also inherit, eventually, his $50 million home and art collection.
Frick’s widow Adelaide and two adult children received $25 milion.
The Frick funeral train arrived in Pittsburgh at 9:44 on an early winter morning. The body was transported to Clayton, the Frick home in the city’s Point Breeze neighborhood. Some family members thought an hour or two of public visitation was warranted. Childs Frick, the great man’s son, put his foot down. No visitors! he ruled. The reason was unclear, though one suggests itself. There was no telling what labor agitator or union ruffian might walk through the door to get a final glimpse of the man many considered to be the Number 1 enemy of workingmen everywhere.
H.C. Frick was sent on his way with a simple Episcopalian service. A friend’s wife sang Lead, Kindly Light. Pallbearer included Senator Philander Knox of Brownsville and the brothers Andrew and Richard Mellon.
Frick had dominated the coal and coke fields of western Pennsylvania “when he was not much more than a boy,” the Times pointed out. “He … played the {business} game fairly,” as the dog-eat-dog mentality of 19th century industrial America was understood by his contemporaries, according to the newspaper.
“Never a friend of ostentation, if Mr. Frick built a palace on Fifth Avenue, it was as a museum for the inestimable treasures of art which it was his happiness to accumulate for the public benefit…. The rich are so much for others, not for themselves.”
Soon after Frick’s will was filed the Daily News Standard reversed course once again, taking note of a published report that after taxes, Uniontown Hospital would receive not $500,000, but a mere $114,000.
Frick’s body was borne from the house in Point Breeze to Homewood Cemetery, where it was laid to rest. Much too clever for its own good, the Times reported that the grave was “within the shadow of the Homestead Steel Mill, which Mr. Frick built from a small mill to the world’s largest workshop.”
Richard Robbins lives in Uniontown. He can be reached at dick.l.robbins@gmail.com.