e develop into a millionaire.

Henry Phipps, still living at the age of seventy-eight, was the only one
of Carnegie's early associates who remained with him to the end. Like
many of the others, Phipps had been Carnegie's playmate as a boy, so far
as any of them, in those early days, had opportunity to play; like all
his contemporaries also, Phipps had been wretchedly poor, his earliest
business opening having been as messenger boy for a jeweler. Phipps
had none of the dash and sparkle of Carnegie. He was the plodder, the
bookkeeper, the economizer, the man who had an eye for microscopic
details. "What we most admired in young Phipps," a Pittsburgh banker
once remarked, "is the way in which he could keep a check in the air
for three or four days." His abilities consisted mainly in keeping the
bankers complaisant, in smoothing the ruffled feelings of creditors, in
cutting out unnecessary expenditures, and in shaving prices.

Carnegie's other two more celebrated associates, Henry C. Frick and
Charles M. Schwab, were younger men. Frick was cold and masterful, as
hard, unyielding, and effective as the steel that formed the staple
of his existence. Schwab was enthusiastic, warm-hearted, and
happy-go-lucky; a man who ruled his employees and obtained his results
by appealing to their sympathies. The 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 bor