“The Public Is Entitled to Know”: Fighting for the Public Memory of Henry Clay Frick

On Saturday, July 23, 1892, Russian immi­grant and New York anarchist Alexander Berkman burst into the office of Henry Clay Frick in down­town Pittsburgh, stabbed him three times, and shot him in the ear and neck. Frick fought back and, with his secretary’s assistance, eventually subdued his assailant. Although he had sustained several serious wounds to his legs and chest, Frick insisted not only on being treated in his office but completing the work day. In the midst of his worry about his sickly infant son (who would die little more than a week later), and his personal battle with organized labor in the violent lockout and strike in Homestead, Henry Clay Frick maintained a facade of confidence and fortitude.

Berkman’s attack on Frick and the steel magnate’s reac­tion – best described as “business-as-usual” – foreshadowed the ways that Henry Clay Frick would be remembered in, and throughout history. In spite of historians’ harsh and universally critical assessments of Frick as an exploiter of labor and a quintessential robber baron, the public monuments to his memory flourish in almost blissful ignorance. During this centennial year of the Home­stead Strike, the debate over the life and times of Henry Clay Frick stirs once again.

The details of Frick’s life are generally well-documented. Born in 1849 in West Overton, Westmoreland County, he received little formal educa­tion. He worked on his father’s farm and at various family businesses in the region, in­cluding a stint as a bookkeeper for his grandfather’s distillery. Beginning in 1871, he began to invest in bituminous coal mines in Westmoreland and Fayette counties, and in the beehive ovens used to convert this coal into coke, an essential ingredient in producing iron. Frick correctly anticipated the growing need for iron in the Pittsburgh steel mills. Within a year, his company controlled one hundred ovens and, by the end of the 1870s, Frick was a thirty year old millionaire known as the “Coke King of Connellsville” (a Fayette County town and center of coke production).

During the 1880s, Frick’s financial fortunes grew even more dramatically through his various business dealings with Pittsburgh capitalists Andrew Mellon and Andrew Carnegie. Despite their sometimes com­bative relationship, Carnegie came to regard Frick as a capa­ble associate and in 1889 of­fered him the chairmanship and two percent ownership of Carnegie Brothers Steel. Frick reorganized the company and, within two years, had amalga­mated the mining, milling, and transportation operations. He firmly established himself as an implacable foe of orga­nized labor and criticized Carnegie for accepting favor­able contract terms with the Amalgamated Association of Steel, Iron and Tin Workers in 1889. He took pride in break­ing the Connellsville coal miners’ strike the following year. As negotiations with the Homestead steelworkers faltered in 1892, Frick constructed a twelve foot high, three mile long fence topped with barbed wire around the plant, which disgruntled workers chris­tened “Fort Frick.” He also engaged the Pinkerton Detec­tive Agency, founded in 1850 by Allen Pinkerton, to protect the plant should a strike erupt. To Robert Pinkerton – whose company motto was “We Never Sleep” – Frick dis­patched an urgent missive on June 25, 1892.

We will want 300 guards for service at our Homestead mills as a measure of precaution against interference with our plans to start operation of the works July 6th, 1892 …. These guards should be assembled at Ashtabula, Ohio, not later than the morning of July 5th, when they may be taken by train to McKee’s Rocks, or some other point upon the Ohio River below Pittsburgh, where they can be transferred to boats and landed within the enclosure of our premises at Homestead. We think absolute secrecy essential in the movements of these men …. As soon as your men are upon the premises we will notify the Sheriff and ask that they be deputized ….

On Tuesday, June 28, Henry Clay Frick closed the Homestead operation, the Carnegie Steel Company’s largest mill located eight miles south of Pittsburgh on the banks of the Monongahela River, and Pinkerton guards arrived by barge at dawn on Wednesday, July 6. The battle between the three hundred armed guards and Home­stead’s workers left twelve dead and scores injured. When the Pinkertons surren­dered and gave up their arms, a throng of angry men, women, and children attacked and robbed them as they tried to leave town. Four days later Gov. Robert E. Pattison called out the entire state militia and, within hours, eight thousand marched into the mill town. Nevertheless, Frick never once changed his position on the strike. “I will fight this thing to the bitter end,” he said. “I will never recognize the union, never, never!” He triumphed on Sunday, November 20, as workers returned to the mill without a contract, and the union declared the strike over.

Despite his notoriety result­ing from the Homestead Strike, Frick continued to enjoy enormous success at the helm of the Carnegie Steel Company throughout the closing decade of the nine­teenth century. Steel produc­tion tripled during the 1890s, prompting Andrew Carnegie to declare that profits were “prodigious.” At the same time, however, disagreements between Carnegie and Frick over financial relationships became so serious during this period that the two men agreed to consolidate their companies – H.C. Frick Coke Company and Carnegie Steel Company, Ltd. – into the Carnegie Company in 1900. Frick agreed to resign as chair­man of the steel company and as president of the coke com­pany. A year later, this new company reorganized as the United States Steel Company.

Although Frick no longer controlled the daily operations of the nation’s largest steel company, he was, neverthe­less, extremely wealthy. He remained active in several businesses, especially rail­roads. He served as a director for seven major railroad com­panies and was one of the largest owners of railroad stock in the world. His chief interest, though, was the acquisition and exhibition of the world’s greatest works of art. In the 1880s, he began collecting paintings by western Pennsyl­vania artists, including George Hetzel, A. Bryan Wall, and Joseph R. Woodwell. Frick’s taste grew more sophisticated and international and, during the late 1890s, he became inter­ested in Old Masters and pur­chased an average of one important painting each month. After he moved per­manently to New York in 1905, Frick accumulated paintings with greater zeal, and by 1912 a Connoisseur magazine re­viewer took note of Frick’s determination to surround himself with the finest works of art. “By the exercise of an exacting and discriminating taste, Mr. Frick has succeeded in forming a collection, small as to numbers, but unrivaled in importance:’ Before his death in 1919, the size of Frick’s collection had doubled.

The public image Henry Gay Frick cultivated during his life – as well as that pre­served by his family after his death – portrayed him as a self-made man, a family patri­arch, a philanthropist, and a patron of the arts. To this day three museums reinforce that idealized image: the West Overton Museums in West­moreland County; the recently restored Gayton in Pittsburgh; and the internationally renowned Frick Collection in Manhattan.

The buildings and collec­tions at West Overton reflect Frick’s humble origins. Since 1928, the Westmoreland­Fayette County Historical Society, founded by Helen Gay Frick, has preserved the homestead and distillery of Frick’s grandfather, Abraham Overholt, and the small stone cottage where Frick was born. Visitors to the complex may tour the buildings, which contain furnishings, farm tools, and household items from the eighteenth through the early twentieth centuries. A film, Pillars of Fire illustrates the coke-making process. The current interpretation at the West Overton Museums em­phasizes the simplicity and rugged individualism of Frick’s forebears. In addition, the complex identifies the Over­holts with the fundamental values and events of the early American experience. A series of murals commissioned by Helen Clay Frick and painted by Alethea Hill Platt in 1928 depicts major themes in set­tling the frontier, including the French and Indian War, the burning of Hanna’s Town, Gen. Edward Braddock’s death, the Battle of Bushy Run, and early buildings and structures of Pittsburgh.

At Clayton, in Pittsburgh’s Point Breeze section, the do­mestic life of the Frick family during the last decades of the nineteenth century has been painstakingly preserved and carefully restored. Frick pur­chased the two-story Italianate house shortly after his mar­riage to Adelaide Childs in 1881. They moved into the house early in 1883 and trans­formed it into an elegant four­-story, twenty-three room mansion. Here the Fricks raised their son, Childs, and daughter, Helen, and hosted Pittsburgh’s economic, cul­tural, and political elite. At Clayton, Frick also began to amass his extraordinary art collection, which the January 24, 1903, edition of the Pitts­burgh Bulletin duly noted. “The superb art of Gayton has, in itself, rendered this beautiful home famous in the art and social world.”

Even though Frick left Clay­ton shortly after the opening of this century, his daughter maintained it as her Pittsburgh residence, visiting frequently until her death in 1984. In her will she arranged for the resto­ration of the house as a mu­seum, and in September 1990, after several years of careful research and skillful conserva­tion, Clayton opened its doors to the public. Also located on the five and one-half acre site are an art museum, a green­house, a children’s playhouse which now serves as a visitors’ center, and a museum show­casing carriages, sleighs, and antique automobiles.

More than nine thousand objects in the diverse collec­tions of Clayton strongly evi­dence Henry Clay Frick’s love of both fine and decorative arts. There are pieces by artists William Hogarth, William Michael Harnett, Claude Monet, Jean-Francois Millet, Thomas Gainsborough, and Sir Joshua Reynolds. Among the household items are Bo­hemian glass, French and Japanese vases, English ce­ramics, Rookwood pottery, and New England silver, in­cluding an elegant five piece sterling silver coffee service made by the Whiting Manu­facturing Company of North Attleboro, Massachusetts, about 1885. In addition, the Clayton collection contains more than three thousand articles of clothing and related accessories – such as a yacht­ing suit designed by Gustav Beer – reflecting Adelaide Frick’s taste for conservative elegance.

While there has been no deliberate effort to diminish Frick’s acquisitive nature, the purpose of Clayton’s restora­tion is to interpret the house as “the center of family life for the Fricks and their young children – a place of refuge, of merriment, of childhood en­chantment.” In this effort, the restorers of Clayton have been successful; visitors to the house come away with the impression that they have stopped in at a moment when the Frick family is only tempo­rarily away from the premises. The family’s games, medi­cines, and books are exhibited as if they are still in use. Tours reiterate the intimacy of the Frick family and quote exten­sively from Helen Clay Frick’s personal recollections of grow­ing up amidst “azure skies and green lawns.” At age ten, Helen Frick wrote, “My bed­room is so, so pretty. There are pretty flowers and birds painted on the ceilings and walls …. If all the children had such a pretty room as mine, there would not be any of them sad or unhappy.”

Just as Clayton is the last of the grand houses that once made up Pittsburgh’s “Million­aire’s Row,” the Frick mansion in New York survives as one of the few freestanding houses on Fifth Avenue. More than any other place in the city, it captures the sumptuous pri­vate life of the moneyed elite in the last years of America’s Gilded Age. Constructed between 1911 and 1914 on the corner of East Seventieth Street, the mansion served as a private residence for the steel magnate until his death in 1919. Frick conceived of the house as a showplace for his world-class collection of Old Masters. Formally opened as a museum and christened the Frick Collection in 1935, it has become one of the best-loved places in the city. Visitors – and even jaded native New Yorkers – find solace and beauty in its tranquil atmos­phere, while many art critics and historians claim that, “painting for painting, the Frick Collection is quite simply the greatest in the world.” Among the fifteen hundred paintings, sculptures, and objects are Rembrandt’s The Polish Rider and the large Self­-Portrait, Velazquez’s King Philip IV of Spain, and Vermeer’s Mistress and Maid and Officer and Laughing Girl.

The landmark buildings and collections in West Over­ton, Pittsburgh, and New York create – and preserve – a powerful public image of the indomitable Henry Clay Frick as a self-made family man and arts patron. Nonetheless, no amount of favorable publicity could discount the notoriety he acquired for his role in the 1892 Homestead strike. During his lifetime, he was known as the man who built Fort Frick, the man who brought in armed Pinkerton guards in a siege on the mill town of eleven thousand residents, and the man who stubbornly vowed to never, never give in to the union. Nearly everyone who wrote about the infamous steel strike, beginning with the eyewitness accounts of jour­nalist Arthur Burgoyne, agree that Frick’s steadfast opposi­tion and arrogance toward organized labor precipitated the violent confrontation of that summer. For the first time in American history, public opinion as expressed in edito­rials, sermons, and political speeches gave overwhelming support to the rights of labor and condemned the use of force by the Carnegie Steel Company’s management. The assessment of Frick’s contem­poraries has stood the test of time. Although the Home­stead Strike has elicited little formal scholarship, the judg­ment upon Henry Clay Frick in this episode is uniformly unfavorable.

Given the disparity be­tween the harsh verdict of historians and the favorable impression created by historic sites and museums, a collision between these views was inev­itable. In 1964, Random House published Pennsylvania: Birth­place of a Nation, and Helen Clay Frick received a copy as a Christmas present. Within a week, she fired off a letter to the author, Sylvester K. Stevens, executive director of the Pennsylvania Historical and Museum Commission, the Commonwealth’s official history agency. She accused Stevens of completing “a very poor research job,” adding, ” … you accept unfounded and incorrect reports without try­ing to learn the truth.” A month later she brought suit against Stevens in the Cumberland County courts and sought an injunction prohibiting the sale and distri­bution of his book.

Stevens was struck with the lawsuit at the pinnacle of his career. He had fulfilled a major goal with the completion of the William Penn Memorial Museum and Archives Build­ing adjacent to the State Capi­tol. His book on Pennsylvania history had received generally positive reviews and had nearly sold out its first print­ing. Helen Clay Frick’s review, however, objected to Stevens’ statements that her father had “built a monopoly … was successful in beating down efforts at unionizing … made extensive use of immigrant labor … cut wages … extracted the longest hours of work physically possible … broke the power of the union … was stern, brusque, autocratic ” and, with Andrew Carnegie’s blessing, caused the 1892 Homestead steel strike. Fur­thermore, Stevens asserted that Henry Clay Frick social­ized and attended church with fellow industrialists whose wealth was “not … all amassed in exact accordance with what many regarded as Christian principles.”

In her lawsuit, Helen Clay Frick charged that Sylvester K. Stevens used only secondary sources in making historical judgments, and, most impor­tant, that he had libeled her father. Under Pennsylvania law, courts permitted the legal challenge of statements “tend­ing to blacken the memory” of the dead in a way that lowers living descendants “in the esteem of the community.” Consequently, in June 1965, the case of Frick v. Stevens was tried in the Carlisle courtroom of Cumberland County Com­mon Pleas Judge Clinton R. Weidner. Despite speculation to the contrary, Judge Weidner refused to dismiss the case and decreed that Stevens would have to provide original sources as documentation for his conclusions about Frick. Although the judge prolonged the case by taking this posi­tion, his cautious approach probably forestalled an appeal by the capitalist’s seventy-six year old daughter. Helen Clay Frick and her battery of law­yers, led by David B. Buerger, based their strategy on the assumption that Dr. Stevens’ evidence was solely second­hand. If her lawyers could prove that his historical judg­ments were faulty, they might successfully undermine the credibility of his book and obtain an order requiring Stevens to admit to his pub­lisher that he had lied. If they could succeed, they planned to sue Random House for violat­ing a publisher’s customary responsibility to exercise diligence.

The research required to challenge or support Stevens’ assertions about Henry Clay Frick consumed more than eighteen months. The histo­rian’s legal counsel, George Douglas and Sylvia Rambo, submitted a one hundred and fifty page brief providing de­tails about Frick’s life and the Homestead Strike. The fifty­-three page brief submitted by Helen Clay Frick’s attorney enumerated more than one hundred alleged mistakes in Pennsylvania: Birthplace of a Nation. The judge himself, after considerable research, wrote a fifty-one page opinion which also amounted to a brief biography of Frick and an account of his times.

Judge Weidner’s opinion, issued in May 1967, dismissed the complaint of Helen Clay Frick. He based his opinion on the legal premise that a de­scendant of a public figure cannot claim personal injury based on what is said or writ­ten about that person. Since Stevens had not mentioned Helen Clay Frick by name in his book, she could not claim direct personal injury. In fact, Judge Weidner stated that he lacked the jurisdiction to en­join Random House, the New York publishing company, from distributing the book. He also concluded that if a court sought to make corrections on behalf of every person who did not like what had been writ­ten, “a court of equity would be writing the book, not the author:’ In his opinion, he also observed that “by analogy, Miss Frick might as well try to enjoin publication and distri­bution of the Holy Bible be­cause, being a descendant of Eve, she does not believe that Eve gave Adam the forbidden fruit in the Garden of Eden, and that her senses are of­fended by such a statement about an ancestor of hers.”

While Weidner’s legal rea­soning was not surprising, his historical analysis went far beyond what might be ex­pected in a case before a county court. Stevens’ conten­tions, according to Judge Weidner, “were not only true … but were even milder than might have been war­ranted” by the facts. Among his ninety findings of fact, Judge Weidner found that:

21. The statement that (Frick) was successful in beating down efforts at unionization in his coke and coal holdings is true.
22. The statement that (Frick) made extensive use of immigrant labor in his coke and coal holdings is true.
23. On more than one occa­sion, (Frick) cut wages.
30. The Frick mines, as well as other bituminous mines, were without anything resembling modern safety appliances or prac­tices, and serious accidents were common.
33. The Frick company towns, as well as those of the other bitu­minous mine owners, were company-owned houses that were shoddy wooden shacks without any sanitary facilities, which the operators rented at high rates to the workers.
36. The sentence, “The power of the (Amalgamated) union was broken in the bloody and disas­trous Homestead strike in 1892 by stern, brusque, autocratic Henry Clay Frick,” did not imply that (Frick) caused the bloodshed, but that (Frick) broke the power of the union.
44. On July 6, 1892, Mr. Frick sent the 300 Pinkerton men to the plant by the river.
46. Henry Clay Frick was responsible for the bloodshed, although not solely responsible.
88. (Dr. Stevens’) statements about Henry Clay Frick are not malicious.
89. (Dr. Stevens’) statements about Henry Clay Frick … were based on reasonable investigation and research.
90. There is no abuse of privi­lege by (Dr. Stevens).

Rarely had the right of a historian to conduct research, interpret source materials, and reach independent conclusions been more forcefully defended in an American court. Earlier in the 1960s the first amend­ment rights of newspapers and journalists had been upheld in celebrated cases involving advertisements published in The New York Times by civil rights organizations and Wil­liam Manchester’s coverage of Pres. John F. Kennedy’s assas­sination. With Judge Weidner’s decision, Stevens and the entire history community could finally breathe a collec­tive sigh of relief.

The case had enormous personal impact upon Stevens. He had first reacted to Helen Clay Frick’s critique with a reasoned argument that, “it does not do any good to sweep these facts under the rug. It is better if we do know them and thus gain apprecia­tion of the improvement in our business and political life, along with the changes brought about by the growth of modern organized labor.” As the case wore on, however, Stevens’ frustration and worry began to show. In a letter to a friend, he confessed that “this is a very trying thing in terms of carrying it around on my mind … One thing does im­press me … and that its [sic] the shocking way in which the problems of a historian or biographer and his or her writings may run afoul of the processes of the law and laws of evidence … As it stands, just about any crackpot with a little money can start taking pot­shots at just about anything any historian might write.” After the Weidner decision, Helen Clay Frick finally agreed not to appeal the case, and Sylvester K. Stevens expressed the hope that “no historian has to go through this ordeal again.”

Stevens, well-liked and well-respected throughout the history community, received considerable support from a variety of sources. His per­sonal papers – now part of the holdings of the Pennsylvania State Archives – include cor­respondence from all parts of the country. Julian Boyd, edi­tor of the Jefferson Papers at Princeton University, wrote to colleagues: “Stevens’ personal interest becomes the interest of us all.” In 1966, the leadership of the major professional his­torical organizations, the American Historical Associa­tion and the Organization of American Historians, formed a “Joint Committee for the De­fense of the Rights of Histo­rians under the First Amendment” and raised more than twenty thousand dollars to help defray Stevens’ legal expenses. The committee also initiated an action in federal court to block Helen Clay Frick’s suit. Although the effort failed, the historians’ joint committee established that there were constitutional issues at stake in the Cum­berland County courtroom, as well as issues of historical fact.

Perhaps equally heartening were the letters from descen­dants of coal miners and steel workers in western Pennsylva­nia who provided eloquent testimony on working condi­tions under Henry Clay Frick. A Pittsburgh woman, Anne McGough, wrote that her father earned $1.10 for a twelve-hour day in Frick’s steel mills. “In the eyes of God,” she observed, “an art gallery or a park will never help to cover up for the starvation wages that Henry Clay Frick paid to his white slaves.” A letter written by Henrietta Hagen Nicolay who had grown up near Uniontown detailed both the miserable working and living conditions endured by Frick’s employees. “I person­ally know,” she recalled, “of the horrible housing provided by Frick .. . houses without finish of walls, houses with doors so poorly fitted that an inch of light was plainly visible at both the top and bottom … . A large shelf built across one wall of the upstairs room served as a bed for the entire family. Trenches were dug on each side of the road between the rows of houses for the purpose of dumping slop jars and other sewerage. These things I have seen personally.”

Public opinion supported Stevens as well. Even before the final decision by Judge Weidner, editorials in leading newspapers reiterated the far­-reaching implications of Helen Clay Frick’s lawsuit. The Chi­cago Daily News recognized that “the urgent purpose of history is not to protect the reputation of the deceased but to illuminate the present and future for the living. Dictatorships have for their own rea­sons seen fit to hamstring their contemporary historians, with the results both tragic and ludicrous. The very ends of truth and freedom require that it not be allowed to happen here.”

Some of the best coverage devoted to Frick v. Stevens appeared in The New York Times. Several articles, written by reporter Ben A. Franklin, attracted national attention not long after the first hearing in summer 1965. When Judge Weidner finally dismissed the case two years later, the Times editorial was unequivocal. “In a witty and forceful opinion a Pennsylvania judge has struck down the misguided attempt of Helen Clay Frick to alter her father’s posthumous reputa­tion by censoring history …. Miss Frick would have to sue a lot of authors and censor a good many books to erase the memory of her father’s deeds. Such an invasion of the do­main of scholarship and his­torical literature would be intolerable in any free country … The irony of (this suit) is that until she filed it most people had come to asso­ciate the family name not with the old coke monopoly or the bloody Homestead strike but with that great treasure house otherwise known as the Frick Gallery at Fifth Avenue and Seventieth Street. Silence is often the best public relations.”

Why did Helen Clay Frick expose her father’s memory to such intense public scrutiny and, ultimately, to a stinging condemnation in a Pennsylva­nia court? According to those who knew her, it had never occurred to her that her father would receive an unfavorable verdict. Until she thumbed through the index of Stevens’ Pennsylvania: Birthplace of a Nation and found various offensive observations about her father, she was unaware that any other version of his life existed except the one perpetuated at the various landmarks and art galleries that bear his name. Like the family museums, she did not know or admit to any other interpretations. By seeking to correct Stevens’ statements in public, however, she unwit­tingly unleashed a critical evaluation of her father and lost the enormous control she had exercised over his public memory for so many years. Perhaps the insightful Judge Clinton R. Weidner best char­acterized the bitter scenario.

(Miss Frick) has dedicated her life, her business, and her family fortune in perpetuating (her father’s) memory. Yet … she does not want the public to know anything further of her father and … the manner of his opera­tion and how he amassed a large fortune which she is now devoting to perpetuating his memory. She disclaims any knowledge of his business, his business operations, or his business character and she does not wish anyone else to know anything about it, write anything about it, or speak anything about it, unless favorable and laudatory.

Judge Weidner recognized, of course, that control of his­torical judgments by an indi­vidual or any institution, public or private, is not com­patible with a free society. “The public is now entitled to know all about the facts,” he wrote, “not just those (Miss Frick) wishes to reveal and are favorable to (her father), and debate them. Further, to en­able people to understand and meet the conditions with which they are now con­fronted … the public is enti­tled to know (their) history …. ”

The centennial of the Homestead Steel Strike in July 1992 brings new debate about the meaning of the dramatic events of 1892. Through ex­hibits, conferences, television broadcasts, and books, the story is again being told and interpreted. Unlike the mid-1960s, however, when the Pittsburgh and the Monon­gahela Valley led the world in steel production, the mills at Homestead and throughout the region are closed. Many are being demolished. Against this backdrop of deindustriali­zation and the decline of mem­bership in labor unions, the public memory of the life and times of Henry Clay Frick is shaped by an understanding of the past, by an appreciation of the present, and by a new vision for the future.

For Further Reading

Berkman, Alexander. Prison Memoirs of an Anarchist. New York: Mother Earth Publishing Association, 1912.

Bridge, James Howard. The In­side History of the Carnegie Steel Company. Pittsburgh: University of Pittsburgh Press, 1991.

Burgoyne, Arthur G. Home­stead: A Complete History of the Struggle of July 1892. New York: Augustus M. Kelley Pub­lishers, 1971.

Byington, Margaret. Home­stead: The Households of a Mill Town. Pittsburgh: Univer­sity of Pittsburgh Press, 1974.

Chew, Paul A, ed. Southwestern Pennsylvania Painters, 1800-1945. Greensburg, Pa.: The West­moreland County Museum of Art, 1981.

Fisher, Douglas A. Steel Serves the Nation. New York: United States Steel Corporation, 1951.

Harvey, George. Henry Clay Frick, The Man. New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1928.

Hoerr, John P. And the Wolf Finally Came. Pittsburgh: Uni­versity of Pittsburgh Press, 1988.

Montgomery, David. The Fall of the House of Labor. New York: University of Cambridge Press, 1987.

Sheppard, Muriel Earley. Cloud by Day: The Story of Coal and Coke and People. Pittsburgh: University of Pittsburgh Press, 1991.

Stevens, Sylvester K. Pennsylva­nia: Birthplace of a Nation. New York: Random House, 1964.

Wall, Joseph Frazier. Andrew Carnegie. New York: Oxford University Press, 1970.

In researching this article, the author made extensive use of the Stevens-Outman Family Papers (MG-149), a manuscript collec­tion housed in the Pennsylvania State Archives, Harrisburg.

Brent D. Glass has served as executive director of the Pennsyl­vania Historical and Museum Commission since 1987. From 1983 to 1987, he acted as executive director of the North Carolina Humanities Council, and was the Deputy State Historic Preserva­tion Officer for the North Caro­lina Division of Archives and History for four years. In addition to lech,ring, he has written nu­merous articles on urban, indus­trial, and public history. To celebrate the seventy-fifth anniver­sary of the Commission’s founding in 1913, he wrote an article enti­tled “Expanding a Vision: Seventy-Five Years of Public History,” which appeared in the winter 1989 edition of this maga­zine.