Archives for 2015

By Samuel Phineas Upham

Henry Clay Frick is best known today for the extensive art collection he donated to the city of New York, as well as his mansion and its furnishings to be used as a public art gallery. The gallery is small compared to most modern museums, but the collection of old master paintings is still something worth celebrating.

He earned the title of “Most Hated Man” through two specific actions. The first took place in 1889, but the buildup began a few years prior. Frick had created a fishing club, which included Andrew Carnegie and a few of his friends. Frick was a business partner of Carnegie’s, and, although Carnegie didn’t acknowledge it much, Frick was responsible for much of Carnegie’s fortunes. His fishing club consisted of roughly 60 members, who came across a dam in need of repair.

It happened that this dam was positioned near Johnstown, which was home to a steel rival of Andrew Carnegie. While there is little direct evidence to prove otherwise, historical documents suggest strongly that this fishing group made inadequate repairs to the dam, and, when heavy winter snows fell, the dam burst.

The second incident occurred three years later. Frick and Carnegie were arguing over how to deal with the Homestead Steel Strike, which got so bad that both sides were armed. Frick decided to hire Pinkerton strike detectives (notoriously violent men who existed solely to break up striking workers), and a small scuffle ensued that ended in the deaths of nine workers.

An assassination attempt was later made on Frick over this incident. Frick survived two gunshot wounds to the neck, and four stab wounds to the leg as he and an associate wrestled with his assailant. The attempt brought discredit to the worker’s movement, and made labor unpopular in the press. As a result, the public chose to express their general discontent with a moniker they felt fit the man.

About the Author: Samuel Phineas Upham is an investor at a family office/ hedgefund, where he focuses on special situation illiquid investing. Before this position, Phin Upham was working at Morgan Stanley in the Media and Telecom group. You may contact Phin on his Samuel Phineas Upham website or LinkedIn.

By Phin Upham

Hailing from the region of Feeding Hills, Massachussetts, Anne Sullivan was the oldest of her family’s children. Her parents were both illiterate and unskilled. They journeyed to the US in 1860 from Ireland to escape the Great Potato Famine there.

When she was eight, she contracted trachoma. She suffered painful infections in her eyes, and went partially blind. To make things worse, her mother died that same year and her father left two years later out of fear that he was inadequate. She was sent to an almshouse in Tewksbury Massachussetts along with her brother, who died three months after arriving at the hospital from a debilitating hip ailment.

Anne underwent some surgeries at the almshouse that helped treat her condition, but ultimately not to any serious effect. As a result, Anne did not develop skills in literature or arithmetic. She could only find work as a housemaid.

It was not until an 1880 inspection of her almshouse that she was able to meet and convince one of the inspectors that she should be sent to the Perkins School for the Blind in Boston. She successfully enrolled there in 1880, but her rough manners made it tough for her in the beginning. Soon, she adapted to schooling and graduated Perkins at the age of 20. She was valedictorian of her class as well.

After her education at Perkins, she took a job working for a man named Arthur Keller. His daughter, Helen, was both blind and deaf. Anne successfully broke barriers of language and sight to teach Helen Keller how to live a fulfilling life.

Phin Upham is an investor from NYC and SF. You may contact Phin on his Phin Upham website or Twitter page.

By Phin Upham

During the early days of the labor movement, there were crusaders on both sides fighting for favorable conditions. Those that held capital were invoking English legislation related to restraint of trade, which is a bit like a modern day NDA, in order to sue workers who were colluding to get higher wages and better working conditions. Largely, these business interests were winning their cases in court. That’s because they were able to successfully argue the workers were able to use group negotiating power to get higher wages than an individual might be able to through his own negotiations.

A major source of the dispute was the legality of the laws themselves. Restraint of trade had become well fleshed out over the days of the East India Trading Company and English industrialization. The practice was well substantiated by then.

What defense attorneys had to argue was that America was independent of England, and that the common laws were arbitrary and unknowable. Hunt was an important case because it established precedent, and made the courts create clear legal guidelines on when it was ok to work with others in order to gain higher wages or better conditions.

Their ruling made it impossible to prosecute workers who did not take measures that jeopardized public interests. Later cases would expand on this ruling, adding that the collusion could be as few as two workers who used prejudiced means to get higher wages. This made it illegal to acquire higher wages using tactics that would exclude others from the same benefits.

Phin Upham is an investor from NYC and SF. You may contact Phin on his Phin Upham website or Twitter page.