One thing is clear. Carnegie and Frick represent the American ethos of limitless possibility.

Both men were born to poverty and both became wealthy and powerful beyond imagining.

The impact of their steel-making enterprise on the economy at the end of the 19th century

was as profound as the impact of the American Revolution had been on this country's politics

and philosophy a century before.

And the rupture of their once perfect partnership illuminates the contradictions embodied in those

two hallowed pillars of our thinking, capitalism and the Protestant ethic.

Carnegie and Frick were not the first to wrestle with those contradictions and they were most

assertedly not the last.

But the making and unravelling of their relationship became an often trouble exploration

of America's promise to us all. A reminder that monumental achievement comes at monumental cost.

Their story offers a vivid illustration of a young nation's

steadfast belief in progress and in man's ability to affect his own destiny.

As the ancients observed, such thinking may be fine for the gods, but when mortals attempt to operate on the same plane even

mortals of heroic proportions tragedy ensues. Okay so that was an excerpt from the

book that I read this week and the one I'm going to be talking to you about today, which is Meet You in Hell, Andrew Carnegie, Henry Clay Frick, and the bitter partnership that transformed America.

So there's two things I want to do before I jump into the book.

The first is that quote, that excerpt had the words in there,

two hallowed pillars of our thinking, capitalism and the Protestant

ethic. I had to look up what Protestant ethic meant. I'm used to seeing in like the religious,

like a

Link in the religious context.

...