Hello and welcome to this day, a history show from Radiotopia. My name is Jody Avergan.

This day, July 23rd, 1892, Russian-American anarchist, activist, and author Alexander Berkman sets out to kill Henry Clay Frick.

You may not know Berkman's name, but you likely know Fricks.

One of the wealthiest men in America would go on to be a famed businessman and art collector

and philanthropist.

At this point, 1892, he was the chairman of the Carnegie Steel Corporation, which was in

the middle of a brutal crackdown on striking

workers at the homestead mill in Pennsylvania. I don't know if we've done the homestead strike.

We've done lots of other similar labor showdowns in this era. We will lay out more of that

context, but on this day, Berkman breaks into Frick's office and fire shots, pulls out a knife, tries to kill

the mogul. It did not work, but it became a massive story and changed the narrative around

the strike, around unions, around labor relations, and lots more. So here to discuss a story

that, and I'll just go ahead and say it, a story that makes us think of Luigi Mangione,

kind of before Luigi Mangione. Here, as always, Nicole Hammer of Vanderbilt and Kelly Carter Jackson of Wellesley. Hey there. Hello, Jody. Hey there. So I laid out the two main characters here, and let's sort of get to know these two characters, then set the context, and then bring them together in that assassination attempt. But why don't we start with the mogul? Let's start with Henry Clay Frick.

What do we need to know about this man? I love talking about Frick, because he is one of those

people that, you know, when things were getting renamed in that period between 2017 and 2020,

I was like, somebody needs to come for Frick. We weren't going after

20th century people, but this guy is a bad dude. So who is Frick? Frick started off life as a

farmhand, a bookkeeper, and during this Gilded Age period where Americans were starting to see

some of the first millionaires in the country, Frick makes himself a millionaire by age 30. He aligns himself with Andrew Carnegie. He

becomes the chairman of Carnegie's Steel Empire. He eventually then turns his attention to the railroads

where there's also plenty of money to be made. He is like one of those rich dudes who

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