MEET YOU IN HELL: ANDREW CARNEGIE, HENRY CLAY FRICK, AND THE BITTER PARTNERSHIP THAT TRANSFORMED AMERICA by Les Standiford

Les Standiford, Meet You in Hell: Andrew Carnegie, Henry Clay Frick, and the Bitter Partnership That Transformed America (New York: Crown Publishers, 2005).

Read by John H. Mayer (Books on Tape, 2005); 9 CDs. Also available on Kindle and Nook.

(NON-FICTION)

Reviewed by Wilda Morris

If you knew nothing of history, you might think you were listening to or reading a historical novel—a Horatio Alger story of men rising from poverty to colossal wealth in the Gilded Age; a novel of personal idiosyncrasies and troubled relationships; a tale of conflict between what a man says he believes and how he will live, and the way he actually functions in life; a novel of immense greed.

As I listened to this book, so well read by John H. Mayer, I remembered Robert White, my civics teacher at Iowa City High, saying that it was wonderful that Andrew Carnegie endowed so many public libraries (including the one in our home town), but that he (Mr. White) would have more respect and admiration for him had he paid his workers a fair wage.

Standiford sketches the paths of Carnegie and Henry Clay Frick to the top level of big business in the US. Frick became the king of coke (coal) and Andrew Carnegie, the king of steel. In this period of unbridled capitalism, before antitrust legislation, Carnegie and Frick developed a partnership which gave both of them more power and profit. Carnegie was in Scotland vacationing when workers at Homestead Steel went on strike in 1892. He remained in Scotland, leaving his companies in Frick’s control, telling him to do whatever needed to be done. Frick called in a private police force—300 Pinkerton men, escalating the conflict with the union. The Homestead Strike became the deadliest conflict between labor and management in US history.

Although Carnegie had continually telegraphed his support for Frick’s leadership, when the two men came under heavy criticism for the way the strike was handled, Carnegie was all too ready to pass the blame to his partner, and the relationship soured. Standiford details the breakdown, the different paths taken by the two men in subsequent years (including how they used their wealth). On his death bed, Carnegie sent for Frick, in hopes of reconciliation. The book begins with Frick’s response, “I’ll meet you in hell.” Who knows? If there is a literal hell in the afterlife, Frick might have been right.

This book left me pondering the mix of good and harm caused by each of these men. I think, too, this story serves as a cautionary tale concerning the risks of unregulated capitalism and unbridled greed. When financial institutions “too big to fail” make billions at the expense of people of lesser means; when the CEO of a company pockets several hundred times as much per hour as the workers of the company, or rakes in millions by laying off hundreds or workers and/or sending their jobs abroad, those who know the history of steel and coke cannot help thinking of Carnegie and Frick.