men of the steel yards feared Frick as much as they loved
"Charlie" Schwab. The earliest glimpses which we get of these
remarkable men suggest certain permanent characteristics: Frick
is pictured as the sober, industrious bookkeeper in his
grandfather's distillery; Schwab as the rollicking, whistling
driver of a stage between Loretto and Cresson. Frick came into
the steel business as a matter of deliberate choice, whereas
Schwab became associated with the Pittsburgh group more or less
by accident.

The region of Connellsville contains almost 150 square miles
underlaid with coal that has a particular heat value when
submitted to the process known as coking. As early as the late
eighties certain operators had discovered this fact and were
coking this coal on a small scale. It is the highest tribute to
Frick's intelligence that he alone foresaw the part which this
Connellsville coal was to play in building up the Pittsburgh
steel district. The panic of 1873, which laid low most of the
Connellsville operators, proved Frick's opportunity. Though he
was only twenty-four years old he succeeded, by his intelligence
and earnestness, in borrowing money to purchase certain
Connellsville mines, then much depreciated in price. From that
moment, coke became Frick's obsession, as steel had been
Carnegie's. With his early profits he purchased more coal lands
until, by 1889, he owned ten thousand coke ovens and was the
undisputed "coke king" of Connellsville. Several years before
this, Carnegie had made Frick one of his marshals, coke having
become indispensable to the manufacture of steel, and in 1889 the
former distiller's accountant became Carnegie's
commander-in-chief. Probably the popular mind associates Frick