At that time the American coke industry was in its infancy. The young clerk perceived its possibilities and out of a very slender salary, by frugal living and many privations, saved enough to make some small investments in coal properties. Later, when the coke industry was in the dumps, and most of those connected with it could see nothing but disaster, Frick, convinced of a great future for coke, managed to enlist the aid of a Pittsburgh banker and purchased a number of properties at bargain prices, organizing H. C. Frick & Co., which later became the H. C. Frick Coke Co. In a few years the clerk had risen to be the dominating figure in the coke trade.
When Carnegie decided that economical manufacture of steel implied the acquisition of coke properties he secured control of the Frick Company and later negotiated a partnership with Frick, merging the two companies. Eventually, after a lawsuit and much bitterness between the two men, Frick and Carnegie separated. But when the Steel Corporation took over the Carnegie Company, Frick was induced to become a member of the Finance Committee, and it is generally recognized that his financial acumen was of enormous assistance to the big Corporation in the days before it had established itself firmly. Frick remained a director of the Corporation and one of the most influential members of its Finance Committee until the day of his death.
Frick left an enormous fortune. Although he left substantial legacies to his children and others, the mass of fortune was distributed among public institutions for the good of the community.
The H. C. Frick Coke Co. is still the most important by far of the Steel Corporation’s coke-making subsidiaries. It owns vast areas of land in the Connellsville and surrounding regions near Pittsburgh, but already the writing on the wall may be discerned. The time is coming, slowly but surely, when the great company organized by Frick will produce nothing but coal, when its more than 21,000 coke ovens will be cold, and will no longer light up with their flares the blackness of the night around Connellsville.
At the Frick coke plants coke is made by the old beehive process, in great open ovens, row upon row, where millions of tons of coal a year are turned into coke. But as explained elsewhere, the primitive beehive oven process is wasteful, both as to the amount of coal needed to produce a ton of coke and because the by-products of the coal, tar, ammonia, benzol, toluol, etc., are blown into the air. And gradually the modern coke by-product oven is replacing the old beehive. The Frick Company will be able to hold its own for a long time against the process of modernization. But it must eventually yield.
The operations of the Steel Corporation are not confined to the manufacture of steel. They include a number of auxiliary and incidental activities, including the production of coke by-products, named in the preceding paragraph, a considerable volume of gasoline, all absorbed by the Corporation itself, the operation of steamship lines, the tale of which is told in the chapter on “Exports,” the building of ships, the control of a number of public utilities, and so on.
And the tale of the expansion of the Corporation’s activities is not yet told. Already it is going into the manufacture of railroad cars. Land was acquired several years ago for a large steel plant across the Canadian border, at Ojibway, and it is probable that the building of this plant will not now be long deferred. In fact, it is a fairly safe assumption that the only reason for delay in erecting it is that of present inflated costs.
While the growth of the Corporation will not be too rapid, if for no other reason than that its management is averse to achieving anything that might savor of monopoly, there is no question that its future development in regard to expansion of its steel-making facilities and allied activities will keep pace with the development of American commerce both at home and abroad.