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19 - Why Can You Have Any Car as Long as It Is Black?

The Rise of American Industry

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  30 August 2022

Johan Fourie
Affiliation:
University of Stellenbosch, South Africa
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Summary

After one year, Henry Clay Frick quit the university he was attending and, with two cousins and a friend, founded the Frick Coke Company. The plan was simple. Using a beehive oven, they would turn coal into coke fuel. Coke is an important ingredient in making steel.

Henry’s father had been a farmer and an unsuccessful businessman in Pennsylvania, and Henry vowed that his life would be different. Soon after establishing the Frick Coke Company, however, disaster struck – and it seemed that Henry would follow in his father’s footsteps. A financial crisis in 1873 had reduced the price of coke to 90 cents per ton and Henry’s business partners wanted out. But Henry chose to stay on, wrote a letter to an old family friend, Andrew Mellon, and received a loan of $10,000. For him, depressions were times of expansion; with his new loan he bought out his partners and acquired several coal mines from timid competitors at very low prices.

Type
Chapter
Information
Our Long Walk to Economic Freedom
Lessons from 100,000 Years of Human History
, pp. 109 - 113
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Print publication year: 2022

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