Henry Clay Frick
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Henry Clay Frick (December 19, 1849 – December 2, 1919) was an American industrialist and art patron.
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[edit] Early years
Frick was born in West Overton, Westmoreland County, Pennsylvania, and came from a poor family with a working-class background. At twenty-one, 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.
By 1880, Frick bought out the partnership. The company was renamed H.C. Frick and Company, and employed 1000 workers. Frick was a millionaire by the age of thirty.
[edit] Frick and Andrew Carnegie
Shortly after marrying his wife in 1881, Frick met Andrew Carnegie in New York City. This meeting resulted in a partnership between H.C. Frick and Company and Carnegie Steel Company, and was the predecessor to United States Steel. This partnership ensured that Carnegie's steel mills had adequate supplies of coke. Frick became chairman of the company.
[edit] Homestead strike
Frick and Carnegie's partnership came to an end over actions taken in response to the Homestead Steel Strike, an 1892 labor strike at the Homestead Works of the Carnegie Steel Company. At Homestead, striking workers had locked the company out of the factory and surrounded it with pickets, some of whom were armed. Frick was known for his anti-union policy and as negotiations were still taking place he ordered the construction of a solid board fence topped with barbed wire around mill property. The workers dubbed the newly fortified mill "Fort Frick." With the mill ringed by striking workers, Pinkerton agents planned to access the plant grounds from the river. Three hundred Pinkerton detectives assembled on the Davis Island Dam on the Ohio River about five miles below Pittsburgh at 10:30 p.m. on the night of July 5, 1892. They were given Winchester rifles, placed on two specially-equipped barges and towed upriver with the object of removing the workers by force. Upon landing, the resulting confrontation resulted in a large melee between workers and Pinkerton detectives. Several men were killed, and the riot was ultimately quelled only by the intervention of 8,000 armed state militia. Among working-class Americans, Frick's actions against the strikers were condemned as excessive, and he soon became a target of radical anarchists and others seeking to use the incident to foment labor unrest and even class warfare.
[edit] Assassination attempt
Russian-born anarchist Alexander Berkman plotted to kill Frick in revenge for the ten steelworkers killed by the Pinkerton detectives hired by Frick to disperse the locked-out workers and allow in their replacements. On July 23, 1892, Berkman, armed with a revolver and a sharpened steel file, entered Frick's office in downtown Pittsburgh.
Frick, realizing what was happening, attempted to rise from his chair while Berkman pulled a revolver and fired at nearly point-blank range. The bullet hit Frick in the left earlobe, penetrated his neck near the base of the skull, and lodged in his back. The impact hurled Frick off his feet, and Berkman fired again, again striking Frick in the neck and causing him to bleed profusely. John Leishman, an employee who happened to be in Frick’s office, then grabbed Berkman’s arm and deflected a third shot.
Although seriously wounded, Frick rose and tackled his assailant. All three men crashed to the floor, where Berkman managed to stab Frick four times in the leg with the pointed steel file before finally being subdued by other employees, who had rushed into the office. For more than two hours doctors probed for the bullets; Frick reportedly refused anesthesia so he could help guide their efforts. As the police entered the room, guns drawn, Frick reportedly yelled, "Don't shoot! Don't kill him! The law will punish him."
Frick was back at work in a week; Berkman was charged and found guilty of attempted murder. Berkman's actions in planning the assassination clearly indicated a premeditated intent to kill, and he was sentenced to 22 years in prison. He eventually served a total of fourteen years, and under pressure from supporters in the labor movement, was pardoned in 1906.
Negative publicity resulting from the attempted assassination resulted in the collapse of the strike.
[edit] Later career
Frick resigned from the Carnegie Steel Company, and, in 1900, formed the St. Clair Steel Company. After Carnegie had sold his interest in the Carnegie Steel Company, Frick helped form the United States Steel Corporation. He also accumulated real estate and construction interests, including the first steel-frame skyscraper.
[edit] Private life
In 1882, after the formation of the partnership with Andrew Carnegie, Frick and his wife bought Clayton, an estate in Pittsburgh. They moved in 1883. The Frick children were born in Pittsburgh and were raised at Clayton.
Frick was an avid art collector whose wealth allowed him to accumulate a significant art collection. By 1905, Henry Clay Frick's business, social, and artistic interests had shifted from Pittsburgh to New York. He took his art collection with him to New York. In 1910 Frick purchased property at Fifth Avenue and 70th Street to construct a mansion, now known as The Frick Collection.
To this day, the Frick Collection is home to one of the finest collections of European paintings in the United States. It contains many works of art dating from the pre-Renaissance up to the post-Impressionist eras. In addition to paintings, it also contains a beautiful exhibition of carpets, porcelain, sculptures, and fine furniture; and is a wonderful example of design and architecture. Frick continued to live at Clayton until his death.
Henry Clay Frick died in Pittsburgh, several weeks before his 70th birthday. He was buried in Pittsburgh's Homewood Cemetery. That evening, Emma Goldman and Alexander Berkman were attending a farewell banquet in Chicago, their last whirlwind tour before being expelled from the country by federal authorities. At a dinner given in honor of the anarchist movement, a reporter approached Alexander Berkman with news of Frick's death and asked him what he had to say about the man. Referring to his own impending deportation from the U.S., Berkman coldly replied that Frick had been "deported by God. I'm glad he left the country before me."
Frick left a will in which he bequeathed 150 acres of undeveloped land to the City of Pittsburgh for use as a public park, together with a $2 million trust fund to assist with the maintenance of the park. Frick Park opened in 1927. Between 1919 and 1942, money from the trust fund was used to enlarge the park, increasing its size to almost 600 acres. Following the death of Adelaide Howards Childs Frick in 1931, the Frick Collection was opened to the public as a museum in 1935.
Many years after her father's death, Helen Clay Frick returned to the Clayton in 1981 and lived there until her death in 1984. After extensive restoration, this property was also opened to the public in 1990 as the Frick Art & Historical Center.
