Transcript
Introduction
One of America's wealthiest men, his holdings valued at more than $100 billion in today's dollars, sat up in his sick bed in his Manhattan home and called to one of his caregivers for a pen and paper. Andrew Carnegie, 83, once the mightiest industrialist in all the world was now an influenza-ravaged man. He took up his pen and began to write as if possessed. When he was finished, he summoned to his chambers his longtime personal secretary, James Bridge.
"Take this to Frick," Carnegie said, as he handed the letter to his old confidant. It would have been enough to snap Bridge upright. Surprised enough to hear Carnegie mention that name, much less hand over a letter to that person. True, Henry Clay Frick was a fellow giant of industry, and he and Andrew Carnegie had been partners once. Frick had been the man Carnegie trusted, above all others, to manage the affairs of Carnegie Steel, but the 2 men had not exchanged a word in nearly 20 years. Not since Carnegie drove Frick out of the business and Frick successfully pressed a monumental lawsuit against his former partner, the first in a long string of vengeful acts.
Had Carnegie divulged the contents of this letter, the secretary's expression would have likely turned to outright astonishment. Bridge left Carnegie and made his way down Fifth Avenue from the awe-inspiring 64-room mansion across from Central Park to an even more imposing structure, some 20 blocks south. Bridge arrived at the Frick mansion, a modern-day palace that its owner had vowed would make Carnegie's place look like a hovel. Though Frick, like Carnegie, was white bearded by now as well, he would have never been mistaken for Santa Claus.
Frick's countenance was intimidating. "You see that his head is there, placed on that body for his triumph and your defeat," one of his contemporaries observed. This way Carnegie had gone to great pains to portray himself as a benevolent friend to his workers. He had delegated the job of holding the line on wages and other demands to Frick. This is a fantastic metaphor. A Patton to Carnegie's FDR as it were. Frick tore open the envelope and scanned its contents. Frick glanced up. So Carnegie wants to meet me, does he? A meeting was precisely what Carnegie had called for.
Carnegie had reason that both he and Frick were growing old and that past grievances were beneath their dignity. They were first among equals. Surely, it was time to meet and patch up the wounds they had inflicted upon each other. The words might have touched a chord in almost any other man, but Henry Clay Frick, still the ranking Board Member of U.S. Steel, showed no sign of gratitude or relief.
By this time, Bridge might have been edging to the door. Frick's ire was legendary. He had gone toe-to-toe with strikers, assassins and even Carnegie himself and he had rarely met a grudge he could not hold. Long before Frick had constructed the mansion that would dwarf Carnegie's up the street, he had gone out of his way to purchase a part of land in downtown Pittsburgh. Then he built a skyscraper tall enough to cast Carnegie's own office building next door in perpetual shadow. "Yes, you can tell Carnegie I'll will meet him," Frick said finally, wadding the letter and tossing it back at Bridge. "Tell him, I'll see him in hell, where we're both going."
That was an excerpt from the book that I'm going to talk to you about today, which is Meet You in Hell, Andrew Carnegie, Henry Clay Frick, and the Bitter Partnership That Transformed America and is written by Les Standiford. So the last 7 to 10 days, I've done something that I don't normally do. I was traveling for the holidays, and I usually read one book at a time. I was actually reading three books at the same time.