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Meet You in Hell: Andrew Carnegie, Henry Clay Frick, and the Bitter Partnership That Transformed America

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We live in a time where it's hard to comprehend the wealth, power, and influence wielded by men like Carnegie, Rockefeller, J.P. Morgan, and Vanderbilt. Folks like Bill Gates and Warren Buffett carry only a whisper of the Goliath stature that was attained by a select few in the 1800s.

"Meet You in Hell" is Les Standiford's telling of the story of the rise and fall of a relationship between two such men, Andrew Carnegie and Henry Clay Frick. Frick, the lesser known of the two, created an empire of his own in coke production (the steel-making input, not the soda or the drug) before being swallowed up by Carnegie Steel and agreeing to run that entire operation for Carnegie.

Carnegie was a man accustomed to getting his own way, but his new employee Frick possessed his own ideas on how a company should be run. The differences between the two surfaced occassionally early in their relationship, and were tested further by the Homestead Mill strike in 1890s which ended in the deaths of many strikers and Pinkerton detectives.

This conflict is the true focus of this book, but interestingly doesn't come across as the watershed in the relationship between Carnegie and Frick that Standiford really wants it to be for the sake of his book. That honor comes later, when Frick tries to trick Carnegie into selling his company to a secret group of speculators with a terrible reputation on Wall Street.

This book is still quite an interesting story about the Homestead strike, labor relations in the industrial age, and the realtionship between two titans of industry, but the stories don't mesh the way Standiford sets you up to believe they will. That doesn't hurt this book much - it's still well worth reading - but it's interesting that Standiford stuck with this central premise long after his research and even his own writing showed that it had fallen apart.

Flawed, but certainly not fatally so. Still recommended for its history of labor relations, the relationship between Carnegie and Frick, and the US steel industry. An engaging and informative read.

The dramatic centerpiece of Les Standiford's dual biography of Andrew Carnegie and Henry Clay Frick is the bloody clash between striking steelworkers and imported Pinkerton "detectives" at Carnegie's Homestead, PA plant in early July of 1892. Fourteen people were killed in that battle, and many more injured.

Homestead may have been the signature event in the intertwined careers of Carnegie and Frick, but Standiford's book makes clear that it was not the reason that their close partnership turned to bitter enmity and mutual recrimination. Their breakup came seven or eight years later over a disagreement concerning a proposed sale of the giant Carnegie firm to outside investors whose credentials and intentions were suspect.

Thus, while Standiford's account of the week-long Homestead crisis is cinematically vivid, it does not by itself tell the whole story of the two men's lives. Both were born dirt poor (Carnegie in Scotland, Frick in western Pennsylvania) and rose through the industrial ranks through their own strong ambition and financial cunning. They joined forces only when they found they needed each other. Carnegie was the top man, Frick the on-site chief operating officer.

Carnegie at least publicly claimed to support working men and their right to organize, but Frick was an unapologetic anti-union hardliner. When Homestead exploded in gunfire and mob violence, Carnegie, vacationing back in Scotland, gave Frick full support for whatever means he adopted to suppress the strikers and keep the company sound. Only after it was all over and the dead had been counted did Carnegie express some mild criticism of Frick's tactics.

Standiford emphasizes the strong faith placed by both men in "social Darwinism," the idea that only companies willing to do whatever it took to survive would prosper in the industrial jungles. The welfare of the workforce made a nice topic for ceremonial speeches but was never high on their list of real priorities.

Both men also believed that the key to success in industry was strict control of costs rather than counting up profits or dividends. And after they became wealthy, both men sought to burnish their public images --- Carnegie by donating almost 3,000 community libraries and financing a host of other projects, Frick by amassing what is still regarded today as one of the great private art collections.

Standiford tells this complex tale in the style of a practiced writer (he has written ten novels and three other works of nonfiction). His research has been thorough, though his text is not without errors (Saugus, home of the earliest blast furnace in the United States, is in Massachusetts, not Michigan; Carnegie Hall was opened in 1891, not 1892). He does about as well as anyone could in trying to clarify the byzantine workings of high finance in the steel industry, a subject pretty much impossible to make interesting to non-millionaires.

Frick and Carnegie are present in Standiford's pages in all their personal complexity and baffling contradictions. There are also minor characters orbiting around them who are memorably portrayed, notably a union leader named Hugh O'Donnell who did his best to keep the militant steelworkers from erupting and tried vainly to find a way to head off the violence.

In the end, Frick was finally forced out of his high position in Carnegie's company and the two men ended their lives bitter enemies. Standiford's title is a paraphrase of a remark Frick made in the spring of 1919 in response to an offer of meeting and reconciliation from Carnegie: "Tell him I'll see him in hell, where we are both going." They died within weeks of each other that very year.

Standiford has done a good job of bringing before a new generation this classic love-hate story played out among smoky steel plants and lavish residential palaces. He has a tendency now and then to sermonize unnecessarily, but his basic story is both relevant and enthralling. The ghosts of his two protagonists, if they are still feuding in the hereafter, will at least find his book reasonably balanced and a valuable reminder of a crucial period in America's industrial history.

--- Reviewed by Robert Finn (Robertfinn@aol.com)

This is well-covered territory for any avid student of steel's history: the rise of two great pillars of the steel industry, the focal event based on the bloody Homestead strike, and the increasingly bitter demise in the relationship between Frick and Carnegie that followed. The two preceding Amazon reviews provide excellent insight as to the value of the book and the character of the men.

Homestead produced, in final count, thrity-one deaths. The original clash, in early July 1892, just outside of Pittsburgh, killed a small number of men. One Pinkerton guard brashly shot himself in the head in front of his colleagues stuck in the barge rather than fall into the hands of the strikers. Carnegie -- by most accounts -- felt betrayed by Frick's hard-nosed handling of the Homestead crisis. Carnegie insisted, especially after the deaths of Pinkerton "police" and strking workers -- that he would have just let the plant stay idle, wait the strikers out, and offer them no reason to fight. Carnegie wanted to be loved; he dreamed that a worker might even say, "If only you had been here, this would not have happended." Frick would not have any of this. He had firm, well-entrenced ideas not only about his rights as a capitalist, but also in his skills and obligations as Carnegie's chief operating officer.

The book does best at constrasting these two men. In some respects they were very much alike. "Ruthless" is not too harsh a word to describe the manner in which they cut costs, built their networks of industries, and squeezed out minor players. They were the masters of the dominant network of the day, based on steel and rail. As entrepreneurs Carnegie may still have not found an equal, not even in Bill Gates, although there are some parallels in the lives and methods of the two men. Frick comes across more as the master implementer, less of the visionary that Carnegie appears to have been. Frick, tied most closely to the production of coke, was a little further down the industrial stream.

The final conflict was more of a clash of egoes, with both men realizing that their personal fortunes lie with a schism. When Frick did not get his way in the split of the wealth, after thinking he had Carnegie's commitment, he was never going to forgive Carnegie for stepping back from the deal. Carnegie, on the other hand, felt Frick tried to front for some unscrupulous buyers and, despite Carnegie's own ruthless tactics, found Frick's friends to be unsavory. Such a divide between two such men was perhaps inevitable.

The research is rich; the book is full of details. What it lacks, in this reviewer's mind, is the full color of the story, of the poverty and squalor of the working men, just as much the ricj splendor of the wealthy. The story moves quickly across the lives of the men as well as the birth of the industries that they helped to create. There are three stories here -- Carnegie, Frick, and Homestead -- requiring perhaps more than any one book can provide.

Carnegie Hall. Carnegie Mellon University. The Carnegie Library - not just 1, but 3000 of them throughout the English speaking world. Much of the legacy of Andrew Carnegie is that of his philanthropic efforts. In 1901 Andrew Carnegie received nearly $230 million from the sale of Carnegie Steel. He spent the rest of his life giving away almost all of that fortune.

Henry Clay Frick, Carnegie's one-time partner at Carnegie Steel, directed that his mansion and personal art collection be converted into an art museum upon his death. His Pittsburgh mansion, Clayton, is a popular field trip site in Western Pennsylvania.

Andrew Carnegie was the founder of Carnegie Steel, and Henry Clay Frick founded HC Frick Coke, supplier to Carnegie Steel, who eventually became Carnegie's business partner. But over time their relationship soured, and they became estranged to the point that, when Carnegie sought a meeting of reconciliation in 1919, Frick's response was, "Yes, you can tell Carnegie I'll meet him. Tell him I'll see him in Hell, where we both are going."

The intertwining of the lives and business dealings of Carnegie and Frick are the subject of "Meet you in hell: Andrew Carnegie, Henry Clay Frick, and the bitter partnership that transformed America" by Les Standiford. The book is something of a highly abbreviated biography of both men, concentrating on the time period during which Frick was the Chairman of Carnegie Steel.

The book spends a significant amount of time discussing the events surrounding the Homestead strike of 1892, which found Carnegie, who portrayed himself as pro-labor, conveniently spending the summer in Scotland while Frick managed the events of the strike, bringing in non-union workers and a detail of 300 Pinkerton agents. The confrontation resulted in the deaths of 3 Pinkerton agents and 7 strikers, with many others on both sides of the confrontation being wounded. One result of the failed strike was that union organizing in the steel industry was dealt a serious blow from which it did not recover until the 1930s. The strike also set in motion the events leading to the falling out of Frick and Carnegie, which took place over several years until Frick was finally ousted in 1900.

Despite this book's title, it's not solely about the conflict(s) between Carnegie and Frick. Rather, it's a short and interesting history of two of the most prominent players in the rise of the steel industry in America. Brought together by the steel industry, they forged a successful business partnership, had some conflicts, and acrimoniously parted ways. Carnegie and Frick experienced the conflicts that are the norm among the giant egos of the business world, both past and present.

I found this to be an interesting book. I had heard of the Homestead Strike, but hadn't learned any of its history. And I certainly knew the names of Frick, Carnegie, Phipps, Mellon, and other prominent Pittsburghers, but I didn't know how they all fit into the Pittsburgh history picture. This book provides a good overview of these topics. Standiford does display a strong pro-union bias throughout the book, always referring to the replacement workers as "scabs," for example, when detailing the events of the Homestead Strike. This makes it more difficult for the reader to distill the objective history from the author's opinions.

I do recommend this book for readers who want to acquaint themselves with the names of Carnegie and Frick, as well as those looking for an overview of the birth of America's steel industry, including a popular summary of the events of the Homestead strike. The book may pique the reader's interest for further reading about these events. But even if this book is all that you ever read on these topics, you'll be more educated for having done so.

They say that those who do not know history are doomed to repeat it. It has been my observation that the overwhelming majority of students who have graduated from our high schools in the past quarter century are pretty clueless about American history in general and about the history of the labor movement in this country in particular. Most are blissfully unaware of the sacrifices and hardships our ancestors endured in the struggle for better working conditions. I would strongly recommend Les Standiford's great new book "Meet You In Hell: Andrew Carnegie, Henry Clay Frick and the Bitter Partnership That Transformed America" to history and civics teachers everywhere. It would be a great book for your class to read and offers a tremendous opportunity to discuss with your students the pros and cons of our capitalist system.

"Meet You In Hell" chronicles the lives of two American industrial giants. Henry Clay Frick and Andrew Carnegie represent the consummate "rags to riches" story that we so romanticize in this country. These two men helped to forge America's steel industry and would play a major role in the transormation of the United States from an agrarian society into the most powerful nation on earth. Yes, America is indeed the land of opportunity and our young people should realize that capitalism offers them opportunities that other economic systems simply do not afford. At the same time "Meet You In Hell" will make young people acutely aware of what can happen when capitalism goes awry. For this was clearly the case in the town of Homestead, Pa. in the summer of 1892 when Henry Clay Frick with the tacit approval of Andrew Carnegie commissioned Pinkerton guards and brought in boatloads of "scabs" in response to a labor dispute at the Carnegie Steel mill. The violence and carnage that resulted from that grim confrontation is still considered to be one of the low points in management-labor relations in this country.

"Meet You In Hell" also offers the reader a glimpse into the rather complicated and often turbulent relationship between Carnegie and Frick. In retrospect, it is really quite amazing that their business relationship lasted as long as it did. For these were two headstrong men with huge egos. The relationship would eventually crash and burn and Carnegie and Frick would go their seperate ways to pursue their own individual interests. Curiously, both Carnegie and Frick would spend the final years of their lives giving away the great fortunes they had amassed to worthwhile projects and institutions that would ultimately benefit us all.

"Meet You In Hell" is an very readable and highly enjoyable offering. Whether or not author Les Standiford intended it, this book presents a very balanced view of the pros and cons of capitalism. Students need to understand that many of the issues presented in "Meet You In Hell" are still very relevant today. If you have done any reading at all about Wal-Mart for example you are most likely aware that this company has been accused of employing many of the same tactics against labor that were used by Frick,Carnegie and others more than a century ago. As I said earlier those who do not know history are doomed to repeat it. Highly Recommended.

In this lively and informative book, Les Standiford puts on record what has long been whispered in Pittsburgh and New York for more than a century. Standiford boldly tackles the once taboo subject of H C Frick's unyielding ruthlessness, compared and contrasted with Andy Carnegie's twin desires to make himself rich enough to live like a Laird in Scotland and then to cherubically make amends as his days dwindled down.

Happily Mr. Standiford lifts the veil and presents the truth about J G A Leishman--a likable fellow sandwiched between two clashing titans and would-be mentors. As a student of Mr. Leishman's life and dual careers in the steel industry and international diplomacy, I was glad to see his role mentioned. Of course, there is much more to that side of the story, including the labyrinthine way that Frick engineered Leishman's ouster and ... oddly enough, repeated almost step-by-step that same performance with Leishman's future son-in-law, James Hazen Hyde, in the Equitable Insurance scandal a decade later. (Neither Patricia Beard in After the Ball nor H C F's descendent in the BIG book about his life go far enough in telling the whole story). Someday, perhaps Mr. Standiford will write a sequel to this book, all about John Leishman and his family. If so, I will be cheering him on!

But back to this book, it is a must-read for anyone who has roots in Western Pennsylvania, anyone who wonders about the dark side of beneficent moguls and anyone who just wants to know what made these larger than life characters tick.

The story of their two buildings in the `Burgh is worth the price of the book!

It is, one must say, most fortunate that the imposing "Miss Frick" is no longer icily holding forth from the cobwebs at Clayton. Now, even though he is sealed beneath tons of concrete at Homewood Cemetery, her beloved father H C cannot rest easily... whether in hell or not...

If you find this review helpful you might want to read some of my other reviews, including those on subjects ranging from biography to architecture, as well as religion and fiction

... in the summer of 1892 was the Homestead Steel Works near Pittsburgh PA. In my imaginary postscript to the Divine Comedy, Dante would place one man, Henry Clay Frick, head down in a cauldron of molten steel but with his feet flailing sightlessly in a stylish gallery of paintings by Rembrandt and Velazquez. Henry Clay Frick prophesied roughly such a fate for himself at the end of his life. In 1919, ravaged with illness, Andrew Carnegie attempted a last-moment reconciliation with his erstwhile employee/partner, sending Frick a hand-written request for a meeting. "You can tell Carnegie I'll meet him," Frick said when he'd read the note; "Tell him I'll see him in Hell, where we both are going."

That episode is the source of the title of Les Standiford's duo-biography of Andrew Carnegie, the iconic industrialist/philanthropist who was once the Richest Man in the World, and Henry Clay Frick, the arch-villain of American labor history and the collector of Old Master paintings now on public display in the mansion-museum that bears his name in New York City. The careers of the two steel-making multi-millionaires were so tightly intertwined that a bio of one must be a bio of both. They were, each in his own way, among the "founders" (notice the pun, please) of America's economic might and hegemony in the 20th Century.

"Meet You in Hell" begins, conventionally enough, with the separate accounts of Carnegie's and Frick's early careers, until 'good business' brought them together. Basically, both men were mixtures of shrewdness and ruthlessness. Both achieved monopolistic financial control, Carnegie of steel and Frick of coke for making steel, through practices that would have gotten them jail sentences in the next century. With a fifteen year head start in age, Carnegie was always the richer, cleverer, more complex individual, replete with inner contradictions, a man whose intellect was too large to be housed in one conscience. Author of the best-selling "Triumphant Democracy" -- a book that proclaimed the Right of workers to organize in labor unions and to strike if necessary -- Carnegie was the passive patron of Frick's relentless campaign to destroy the AAISW, the steelworker's union that had emerged in the industry while Carnegie himself was at the helm. In short, Andrew Carnegie was perhaps the grandest hypocrite in American history following a certain famous slave-owner who declared that all men were created equal. Frick's steady climb to wealth was never based on innovative entrepreneurial genius; his one potent tool was cost accounting. Cutting costs to the minimum, including materials and operations, was the basis of his managerial success, from which his all profitable investments followed. 'Labor' was just another Cost to Frick, not to be complicated by any sentimental recognition that Labor consisted of human beings, flesh and blood, needing food and sleep and a modicum of dignity.

The middle chapters of "Meet You in Hell" - almost half of the whole book - narrate the violent confrontation between the iron-fisted Frick and the ironworkers of the Homestead Works, the bloodiest labor-management struggle in American history. It wasn't, strictly speaking, a strike. It started as a lock-out, indeed a fortified lock-out intended to break the contracted union by adamantly refusing to negotiate with union representatives. To enforce his lock-out, Frick hired the Pinkerton detective agency to take control of the mill and to open its doors to 'scab' workers. Thousands of workers, their families, and their neighbors confronted the Pinkertons violently. People were killed, beaten, jailed, dispossessed. Sides were taken in the national press and between political rivals. Author Standiford narrates the incidents quite dramatically and objectively, though his empathy clearly lies with the workers, who were earning an average of $1.50 a day for 12-hour shifts in Hell, while Carnegie and Frick were amassing fortunes greater in adjusted dollars than Bill Gates or Warren Buffet could hope for today.

In the end, the union was crushed, as were most unions in the Gilded Age of Robber Barons. The business practices of Carnegie, Frick, and their ilk would not go unregulated forever, however. The whole thrust of Teddy Roosevelt's anti-trust crusade, and of Progressivism, was aimed at curbing the maldistribution of wealth and power in a supposedly egalitarian society. Organized labor had a longer wait before matters could be redressed. FDR's "New Deal" was NOT intrinsically a program of economic recovery! That's a convenient misperception of the right wing Roosevelt-haters. It was a redistribution of power between labor and capital, legitimizing and empowering the labor movement. Frick, had he lived long enough, would have howled with rage at FDR, and Carnegie would have served ambiguously as one of the Kitchen Cabinet.

The last quarter of "Meet You in Hell" hustles the reader through the scattered events of Frick's and Carnegie's post-Homestead lives. Carnegie, in effect, let himself be bought out, took his money and went home to dedicate himself to giving it away. 'A man who dies rich,' he declared, 'is a moral failure.' He managed to give away roughly four-fifths of his wealth, chiefly to educational institutions and for the founding (ever at the foundry!) of libraries in communities across the breadth of the USA. The first book I ever borrowed from a library in America came from a library built by Carnegie, the only distinguished piece of architecture in a drab farm town in the Upper Midwest.

Frick continued in his management of Carnegie Steel until Wee Andrew slyly engineered his displacement. The antagonism between the two ex-partners grew into open hostility and inveterate hatred. Frick survived an assassination attempt in the year after Homestead. Abandoning Pittsburgh, he stationed himself in hostile proximity to Carnegie, mere blocks away on the Upper East Side of New York. And he devoted his ruthless will increasingly to collecting art. That aspect of his career is better told in the book "Old Masters, New World", which I reviewed just a few days ago.

Personality History Lite. Kind of a gossipy tale focused on the personalities that built great fortunes and American industrial empires at the close of the 19th century. A look at Management and Labor relations at the time, centered on the infamous and deadly Homestead steel strike. Unfortunately, the epilogue's gratuitous swipe at Walmart made me wonder just how balanced the author's perspective and presentation of this "history" is.
The audio version presentation is OK, the reader could be better but he makes do with the material he's given.
Overall, a decent story, perhaps best for readers who enjoy reading history through an examination of the personalities of the time.

This book provided a quick reading and interesting perspective into the lives of men we all grew up knowing as corporate "giants"; perhaps the first American corporate giants.
Not a drama; just a well supported story of how these two men made more money than can be imagined on the backs of working men at the turn of the century.
I found it a worthwhile read, and I recommend it to anyone who has an interest in history, giants in America, or anyone that simply wants to know a little more than our normal history books offer about these men.

Set in the days when Horatio Alger preached the gospel of expansion and mobility hand in hand, this book shows the best and worst of American capitalism. John Calvin once said, "If I have not been able to avoid the reputation of being rich during my life, death will at last free me from this stain." Carneigie was considered "the world's richest man" back in the gilded age, the father of American industry.

On his death bed in 1919, possibly to have a clear conscience about that fateful steel strike of 1892, he wanted to make things right with Henry Clay Frick. It had been more than twenty years since their business relationship soured, but Frick would not give in, saying "tell him ... I'll see him in hell" -- so fierce was their dispute. He died the same year.

The bloody steelworkers' strike had changed their partnership into a furious rivalry. Both were propotents of Darwin's treaching about survival of the fittest. Carnegie was head of the United States Steel Corporation and Frick was a coke magnate who he had entrusted his companies. The steel industry comprised late 19th century rough-and-tumble "big business" and, with their cost control and applied efficiences, they became dominate in the world steel market.

Because of the disastrous way they handled the 1892 strike, their names stand for the worst possible business management to union members everywhere. Frick, acting on Carnegie's orders, set 300 Pinkerton detectives against the uprising workers, and it was the bloodiest management/labor conflict in the United States of America history. The blame went to Frick as he was present at the horrific scene.

Success consecrates the most offensive crimes. (Seneca) This reminds me of Howard Hughes' end; there was just no way Frick could forgive. Les Standiford has also written LAST TRAIN TO PARADISE, DONE DEAL, BLACK MOUNTAIN and OPENING DAY: OR, THE RETURN OF SATCHEL PAIGE. Many archival materials pertaining to the business dealing of the characters above can be found at the University of Pittsburgh's Hillman Library.