Meet You in Hell

by Les Standiford

Here is history that reads like fiction: the riveting story of two founding fathers of American industry -- Andrew Carnegie and Henry Clay Frick -- and the bloody steelworkers' strike that transformed their fabled partnership into a furious rivalry. Author Les Standiford begins at the bitter end, when the dying Carnegie proposes a final meeting after two decades of separation, probably to ease his own conscience. Frick's reply: "Tell him that I'll meet him in hell." It is a fitting epitaph. Set against the backdrop of the Gilded Age, a time when Horatio Alger preached the gospel of upward mobility and expansionism went hand in hand with optimism, Meet You in Hell is a classic tale of two men who embodied the best and worst of American capitalism. Standiford conjures up the majesty and danger of steel manufacturing, the rough-and-tumble of late-nineteenth-century big business, and the fraught relationship of "the world's richest man" and the ruthless coke magnate to whom he entrusted his companies. - Jacket flap. Examines the relationship between two of the founding fathers of American industry--Andrew Carnegie and Henry Clay Frick--and the Homestead Steel Strike of 1892, which led to the dissolution of their partnership.