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.