From Wikipedia:
"Frick was born in West Overton, Westmoreland County, Pennsylvania, U.S., a grandson of Abraham Overholt, the owner of the prosperous Overholt Whiskey distillery (see Old Overholt). Frick's father was unsuccessful in business pursuits. At 21, Frick joined two cousins and a friend in a small partnership, using a beehive oven to turn coal into coke, for use in steel manufacturing, and vowing to be a millionaire by the age of thirty.
Thanks to loans from the family of his lifelong friend Andrew Mellon, by 1880, Frick bought out the partnership. The company was renamed H. C. Frick & Company, and employed 1,000 workers.
Shortly after marrying his wife, Adelaide Childs, in 1881, Frick met Andrew Carnegie in New York City (the Fricks were on their honeymoon). This meeting resulted in a partnership between H. C. Frick & Company and Carnegie Steel Company, and was the predecessor to United States Steel. This partnership ensured that Carnegie's steel mills had adequate supplies of coke. Frick became chairman of the company.
Frick and Carnegie's partnership came to an end over actions taken in response to the Homestead Steel Strike, an 1892 labor strike at the Homestead Works of the Carnegie Steel Company. At Homestead, striking workers had locked the company out of the factory and surrounded it with pickets, some of whom were armed. Frick was known for his anti-union policy and as negotiations were still taking place he ordered the construction of a solid board fence topped with barbed wire around mill property. The workers dubbed the newly fortified mill "Fort Frick." With the mill ringed by striking workers, Pinkerton agents planned to access the plant grounds from the river. Three hundred Pinkerton detectives assembled on the Davis Island Dam on the Ohio River about five miles below Pittsburgh at 10:30 p.m. on the night of July 5, 1892. They were given Winchester rifles, placed on two specially-equipped barges and towed upriver with the object of removing the workers by force. Upon landing, the resulting confrontation resulted in a large mêlée between workers and Pinkerton detectives. Several men were killed, and the riot was ultimately quelled only by the intervention of 8,000 armed state militia. Among working-class Americans, Frick's actions against the strikers were condemned as excessive, and he soon became a target of radical anarchists and others seeking to use the incident to foment labor unrest and even class warfare.
Russian-born anarchist Alexander Berkman plotted to kill Frick in revenge for the seven steelworkers killed by the Pinkerton detectives hired by Frick to disperse the locked-out workers and allow in their replacements. On July 23, 1892, Berkman, armed with a revolver and a sharpened steel file, entered Frick's office in downtown Pittsburgh.
Frick, realizing what was happening, attempted to rise from his chair while Berkman pulled a revolver and fired at nearly point-blank range. The bullet hit Frick in the left earlobe, penetrated his neck near the base of the skull, and lodged in his back. The impact hurled Frick off his feet, and Berkman fired again, again striking Frick in the neck and causing him to bleed profusely. Carnegie Steel vice president (later, president) John George Alexander Leishman, who was with Frick, was then able to grab Berkman’s arm and deflect a third shot, saving Frick's life.
Although seriously wounded, Frick rose and tackled his assailant. All three men crashed to the floor, where Berkman managed to stab Frick four times in the leg with the pointed steel file before finally being subdued by other employees, who had rushed into the office. As the police entered the room, guns drawn, Frick reportedly yelled, "Don't shoot! Leave him to the law, but raise his head and let me see his face." Frick pointed to Berkman's jaw; he was chewing on a capsule of Mercury(II) fulminate which was a bite or two from exploding Frick, Berkman, and everybody else in the office. For more than two hours doctors probed for the bullets; Frick reportedly refused anesthesia so he could help guide their efforts.
Frick was back at work in a week; Berkman was charged and found guilty of attempted murder. Berkman's actions in planning the assassination clearly indicated a premeditated intent to kill, and he was sentenced to 21 years in prison. He eventually served a total of fourteen years, and under pressure from supporters in the labor movement, was pardoned in 1906.
Negative publicity resulting from the attempted assassination resulted in the collapse of the strike. 2,500 men lost their jobs and most of the workers who stayed had their wages halved."