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American National Biography Online Oliver, Henry William (25 Feb. 1840-8 Feb. 1904), ironmaster and businessman, was born in Dungannon, Ireland, the son of Henry W. Oliver, a harnessmaker, and Margaret Brown. His parents emigrated and settled in Pittsburgh in 1842. Henry--usually known as Harry--received a common school education and at age thirteen became a messenger at the National Telegraph Company, thanks to former schoolmate Andrew Carnegie. Their lives were often intertwined. In 1855 Oliver began working for Clark and Thaw, pioneers in the freight-forwarding business, before joining Graff, Bennett and Company, ironmakers, as a shipping clerk in 1859. He served with the Twelfth Pennsylvania Volunteers for ninety days in 1861 and as an emergency volunteer in 1863. He married Edith A. Cassidy in 1862, and the couple had one daughter. Oliver entered business himself in 1861 as a partner in Martin, Oliver and Bickle, operating a small puddling mill in Kittanning, Pennsylvania. Then in January 1863 he joined Lewis, Oliver & Phillips, a new partnership making nuts and bolts. William Lewis ran the shop, John Phillips handled shipping, and Oliver was salesman and office manager. Oliver's brothers David and James joined LO&P in 1866; a rolling mill and expanded product lines were added. By 1880, with sales topping $4 million and 3,000 employees, the firm was one of the largest makers of iron specialities. Lewis retired in 1880, and the firm was restyled Oliver Brothers and Phillips, before being incorporated in 1888 as Oliver Iron and Steel Company. During this period of dynamic growth in Pittsburgh, Oliver steadily gained stature among the city's business elite. He was appointed a director of the Homeopathic Hospital (1866), the Dollar Savings Bank (1869), and the Central Passenger Railway, a horsecar line (also 1869). He held a common council seat from 1871 to 1882 and was council president in 1871 and 1872. He also gained visibility in state and national politics, as a four-time delegate to Republican conventions (1872, 1876, 1888, and 1892) and a member of the platform committees. A presidential elector in 1880, he lost a bid for the U.S. Senate in 1881. He vigorously backed high tariffs and served on President Chester A. Arthur's tariff commission in 1882. In business and politics, Oliver's genial personality served him well, inspiring especially the confidence of backers and bankers. His optimism and demeanor were supported by enormous energy and a keen sense of business opportunities. Oliver, like many businessmen, often operated perilously near financial ruin but proved to be a master juggler. As his horizons expanded, he became a pioneer in big business and realized that success in any given field was beginning to require both growth and a willingness to take on new activities. For example, although Oliver was in the iron business, he worked to improve transportation, as evidenced by his promotion of the Davis Island dam on the Ohio River in the early 1880s. Railroads attracted even more attention, for most businessmen in Pittsburgh believed the Pennsylvania Railroad's freight rates were too high. Oliver was unusual in doing something about it; beginning in 1875, he promoted the Pittsburgh and Lake Erie Railroad (P&LE) and later helped it build a branch to the Connellsville coal fields. His strategy became apparent in 1883 when he arranged for the New York Central, a competing trunk line, to purchase the P&LE and reach Pittsburgh. Oliver had similar plans for the Pittsburgh and Western Railroad. In 1879 he acquired a small line running north from Pittsburgh and used it to develop another rail connection to the Midwest. As president from 1889 to 1893 and chairman until 1901, Oliver added branch lines across Ohio and then constructed the Pittsburgh Junction Railroad (1883-1884) to link the new line to the Baltimore & Ohio Railroad. His goal seems to have been the creation of a shorter western route for the B&O, which acquired the Pittsburgh and Western in 1893 and absorbed it in 1901. Oliver also pushed construction of the Fairport Docks on Lake Erie in 1890 as a coal and iron terminal, raising funds from iron producers in Pittsburgh and Youngstown, Ohio. He argued that this facility would promote competition and bring lower railroad rates. For similar reasons Andrew Carnegie built his Pittsburgh, Bessemer and Lake Erie Railroad in 1897. Oliver, however, also formed the American Transportation Company to ship coal and iron on the Great Lakes. Oliver also expanded the range of activities conducted within his own firms, joining those pioneers who were creating larger, vertically integrated firms to take advantage of the lower costs associated with large-scale operations. First he expanded his line of finished iron and steel goods, then integrated backward to produce his own iron and steel, and finally acquired raw materials and transportation systems. This progression became clear after 1881, as Oliver opened, with his brothers and brothers-in-law, a new wire mill in Pittsburgh, acquired a barbed wire plant in Illinois, and built the Pittsburgh Wire Nail Company in 1882. Then in 1887 they built a new rod mill (previously rods, from which wire was drawn, were imported from Europe) and combined four plants into a single firm, known after 1894 as the Oliver Wire Company. Oliver also tried to produce steel in 1882, but the experimental process he backed proved a costly failure, and the recession of 1883 placed him in serious financial straits. After he recovered, Oliver began to lease or purchase existing plants to produce his own iron and steel. In 1886 he acquired the Rosena Furnace in New Castle, Pennsylvania, bought Hainsworth Steel in Pittsburgh in 1889, and purchased the Edith Furnace in Pittsburgh in 1891. He further expanded in 1890 by building connections to the Schurz Bridge Building Company and opening the Monongahela Tin Plate Company a year later. Oliver also underwrote development of steel freight cars, after the plans of inventor Charles Schoen caught his imagination. Oliver moved Schoen, who began producing pressed steel parts for railroad cars in 1888, to Pittsburgh in 1891 and in 1895 became the largest stockholder in the Schoen Pressed Steel Car Company. The company thrived after Carnegie ordered 600 steel hopper cars in 1896; by 1899, with orders for 15,000 cars, Schoen's firm and a leading competitor were joined into the Pressed Steel Car Company. At that point Oliver started a new firm to produce forged-steel car parts, and in 1901 he launched a rival car-building company with Andrew Mellon. Many business leaders were integrating their firms, connecting materials production and fabrication. But Oliver took the next step and reached backward to control mineral resources. He organized the Monongahela Natural Gas Company, for example, to serve his plants in 1889. Then in 1891 he started leasing coal mines and building coke plants near Uniontown, Pennsylvania, imitating Carnegie, who had gained control of Henry Clay Frick's coal company in 1882. Oliver was far ahead of other steel men, however, in attempting to control iron ore resources. He was the first Pittsburgh ironmaster to grasp the potential of Minnesota's Mesabi range, visiting northern Minnesota in 1892. He instantly recognized the cost advantages of open-pit mining, leased the Mountain Home Mine from developer Lon Merritt (earlier dismissed by Carnegie and Frick), and organized the Oliver Iron Mining Company. Oliver took a huge gamble because Mesabi iron ore required major changes in smelting practice and equipment. Moreover, the depression of 1893 constricted credit, and even Oliver Iron and Steel was forced into receivership. Oliver pressed ahead, leasing a second mine, but by 1894 he was desperate for capital and turned to Carnegie. His old friend, however, opposed owning iron mines and distrusted Oliver's enthusiasm. "Oliver's proposal is just like him--nothing in it," Carnegie wrote in 1892 (Bridge, p. 259). But when Frick, now Carnegie's partner, proposed that Oliver give Carnegie a half interest in Oliver Mining in return for a $500,000 loan, Carnegie relented and Oliver agreed. By 1895 Oliver Mining produced half the Mesabi ore and continued to expand. Doing so required Oliver to dance a delicate minuet with Carnegie and John D. Rockefeller, the main force on the Mesabi range. Because of his lake-shipping interests, Rockefeller had backed iron exploration in Minnesota; the depression left him in control of several mines and the Duluth, Missabe, and Northern Railroad. Oliver discounted fears of Carnegie's partners that Rockefeller would move into steel, and in 1895 he negotiated an advantageous arrangement for both parties. Oliver Mining leased Rockefeller's mines, agreed to produce 600,000 tons per year at a reduced royalty, and promised to ship that ore plus 600,000 tons from Oliver's mines on Rockefeller's railroad and ore boats. Shortly thereafter Carnegie insisted on controlling Oliver Mining and bought all but one-sixth of the stock in 1897. But Oliver remained president, and through 1899 he continued to lease mines, expanding to the Vermilion, Gogebic, and Marquette ranges in Michigan and Wisconsin. Again Carnegie resisted, but Oliver and others eventually convinced him of the value of controlling iron ore. Oliver even provoked a crisis with Rockefeller by acquiring additional Mesabi mines, a breach of the 1895 contract. Although that problem was negotiated away, Oliver further reduced Rockefeller's influence by organizing for Carnegie the Pittsburgh Steamship Company in 1900 to break Rockefeller's stranglehold on lake shipping. Carnegie, never willing to admit poor judgment, recognized Oliver's accomplishment grudgingly, no doubt coloring subsequent assessments of Oliver. For example, Carnegie's 1912 testimony to a congressional committee investigating U.S. Steel acknowledged his resistance to Oliver's plans, adding, "Fortunately I woke up in time. . . . Harry Oliver, my fellow telegraph messenger, was one of the brightest men Pittsburgh ever could boast of, and he saw far ahead, and went up to that region and loaded himself with ore leases" (Wall, p. 598). But Carnegie next emphasized that only Carnegie Steel had been able to "carry the treasure safely through" (Jordan, p. 62). It would be more accurate to say that Oliver's leases, purchases, creative financing, and complex negotiating and Carnegie's money won the day. But Carnegie did not exaggerate when referring to Oliver Mining as a treasure. In 1901 U.S. Steel paid Oliver $17 million for his one-sixth share; more important, Oliver secured the future for first Carnegie and then U.S. Steel with that high-grade iron ore. While building his iron empire, Oliver remained active on several other fronts through the 1890s. He brought Oliver Iron and Steel out of receivership in 1895 and remained chairman of the board until his death. He sold Oliver Wire and Monongahela Tin Plate to two different large trusts, and in 1896 he combined other properties (Edith Furnace, Hainsworth Steel Company, his coal leases, and his share of Oliver Mining) into a single integrated firm, Oliver & Snyder Steel. William P. Snyder, a pig-iron broker, operated the company, the industry's third largest coke producer. Oliver later invested in other Snyder ventures related to Crucible Steel. He also had a hand in mining activities, helping to organize the Pittsburgh Coal Company in 1899, the nation's largest coal company. He became a partner in the Chemung Mining Company, another Minnesota venture that acquired long-term leases on smaller mines, then sold them to U.S. Steel in 1903. Finally, Oliver was involved in the Calumet and Arizona Mining Company (later Phelps-Dodge) in Bisbee, Arizona. Pittsburgh always remained Oliver's home, and he had extensive real estate holdings there, worth an estimated $12 million by 1904. He also planned a huge office building that was built and named for him after his death. And with his brother George he owned four Pittsburgh newspapers. He died in Pittsburgh. The Pittsburgh Dispatch labeled Oliver "One of Pittsburgh's leading captains of industry," but he never escaped Carnegie's shadow. Frick commented in 1897 that "Mr. Oliver is a valuable man, properly controlled, but if he is allowed to run loose, he would soon wreck the credit of any concern he attempts to do business with" (Wall, p. 606). This was Carnegie's view also, but the Dispatch added, "He was a man who could dig a hole for himself better and find a way out easier than any other Pittsburgher of his time." Some talked about "Oliver luck," yet his iron-mining efforts proved him to be a shrewd judge of business prospects, a diplomatic negotiator, a skilled financial manipulator, and even a ruthless operator. Oliver understood the radical changes confronting his industry, and his visions shaped the future of the steel industry. Bibliography No Oliver papers appear to have survived, and Henry Oliver Evans, Iron Pioneer, Henry W. Oliver (1942), is the only biography--a flattering, reasonably accurate account. Two biographical sketches with bibliographies are Terry Reynolds, "Henry W. Oliver," in Iron and Steel in the Nineteenth Century: Encyclopedia of American Business History and Biography, ed. Paul A. Paskoff (1989), and John H. Ingham's entry on Oliver in Biographical Dictionary of American Business Leaders, vol. 3 (1983). To understand Oliver's relationship with Andrew Carnegie and his efforts on the Mesabi iron range, see Joseph Frazier Wall, Andrew Carnegie (1970), and James H. Bridge, The Inside History of the Carnegie Steel Company: A Romance of Millions (1903). Some information on the steel railroad freight car firm can be found in John H. White, Jr., The American Railroad Freight Car: From the Wood-Car to the Coming of Steel (1993). A valuable obituary is in the Pittsburgh Dispatch, 8 Feb. 1904. Bruce E. Seely Citation: Bruce E. Seely. "Oliver, Henry William"; http://www.anb.org/articles/10/10-01246.html; American National Biography Online Feb. 2000. Access Date: Copyright (c) 2000 American Council of Learned Societies. Published by Oxford University Press. All rights reserved. Copyright Notice Permission is granted to make and distribute verbatim copies of the American National Biography of the Day and Sample Biographies provided that the following statement is preserved on all copies: From American National Biography, published by Oxford University Press, Inc., copyright 2000 American Council of Learned Societies. Further information is available at http://www.anb.org. American National Biography articles may not be published commercially (in print or electronic form), edited, reproduced or otherwise altered without the written permission of Oxford University Press which acts as an agent in these matters for the copyright holder, the American Council of Learned Societies. Contact: Permissions Department, Oxford University Press, 198 Madison Avenue, New York, NY 10016; fax: 212-726-6444.
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