Joseph Wharton founded the Wharton School at the University of Pennsylvania, co-founded the Bethlehem Steel company, and was one of the founders of Swarthmore College.
67 Facts About Joseph Wharton
2.
Joseph Wharton's youth was spent in the family's house near Spruce and 4th Streets in central Philadelphia and at the country mansion "Bellevue".
3.
Joseph Wharton's father was a typical gentleman, and did not hold a regular job because he had several illnesses, but oversaw his estate, served on the Philadelphia School Board, and was active with his wife, Deborah, in the Hicksite ministry.
4.
Between the age of 14 and 16, Joseph Wharton was prepared for college by a private tutor.
5.
Joseph Wharton was accomplished in sports such as horseback riding, swimming, and rowing on the Schuylkill River.
6.
Joseph Wharton studied chemistry at the Philadelphia laboratory of Martin Hans Boye.
7.
When he was 19, Joseph Wharton apprenticed with an accountant for two years and became proficient in business methods and bookkeeping.
8.
In 1849 Joseph Wharton started a business manufacturing bricks using a patented machine which pressed dry clay into forms.
9.
In 1853, Joseph Wharton joined the Pennsylvania and Lehigh Zinc Company near Bethlehem, Pennsylvania, first managing the mining operation and later the zinc oxide works.
10.
Joseph Wharton married Anna Corbit Lovering, a fellow Quaker and the younger sister of his brother Charles' wife, in 1854 in a Quaker ceremony.
11.
Joseph Wharton preferred a life of comfort but evidently did not wish to stifle his ambition.
12.
Later, when Joseph Wharton was more secure in his job manufacturing zinc, Anna and Joanna came to live with him in Bethlehem, where they lived a happier life for two years, partaking in social events and exploring the local rivers and countryside.
13.
Joseph Wharton purchased a country estate several miles north of Philadelphia, called "Ontalauna", and bought a donkey for their three children, Joanna, Mary, and Anna, to ride along on horseback expeditions.
14.
Joseph Wharton often studied at night or played history games with the children.
15.
Joseph Wharton renamed the Camden plant the American Nickel Works, and his office there became his center of operations.
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Joseph Wharton rebuilt it in 1868 and made excellent profits from producing nickel because it became favored for coinage.
17.
Joseph Wharton won wide acclaim for his malleable nickel, the first in the world, and for nickel magnets, and received the Gold Medal at the Paris Exposition of 1878.
18.
Joseph Wharton's factory produced the only nickel in the US and a significant fraction of the world supply.
19.
Joseph Wharton was successful because he worked hard to increase efficiency and profitability of the businesses he acquired, and energetically pursued markets for his products.
20.
Joseph Wharton made a robust profit from his nickel business over its 40-year duration, but by 1900 its outlook was fading due to foreign competition.
21.
Joseph Wharton sold his American Nickel Works in Camden and the Gap mine for a share in the new company, and was named one of the dozen board members.
22.
Joseph Wharton saw a potential solution to both of these problems.
23.
Joseph Wharton started purchasing land in southern New Jersey in the 1870s, eventually acquiring 150 square miles in the Pinelands which contained an aquifer replenished by several rivers and lakes.
24.
Joseph Wharton suggested that a city-controlled company could develop the necessary water mains and pump, funded by public purchase of stocks and bonds.
25.
Joseph Wharton's family had long roots in Newport, Rhode Island and he summered there with his extended family at the family house on Washington Street for many decades.
26.
When his children were young, Joseph Wharton enjoyed taking them rowing and sailing about the harbor.
27.
Joseph Wharton constructed Horsehead-Marbella, a large stone house with a prominent tower overlooking the entrance to Narragansett Bay.
28.
Joseph Wharton named the house "Marbella" but it was later called "Horsehead" after a rock formation on the cliffs below that looked like the head of a horse from a certain angle.
29.
The fort took several years to finish and during this time the Horsehead property continued to be threatened so Joseph Wharton purchased an additional 247 acres in the southern part of Jamestown including several farms, one at Beavertail in 1899.
30.
Joseph Wharton traveled widely and became involved in many industrial enterprises such as mines, factories and railroads.
31.
Joseph Wharton started several enterprises on the South New Jersey property, including a menhaden fish factory that produced oil and fertilizer, a modern forestry planting operation, and cranberry and sugar beet farms.
32.
Joseph Wharton purchased land containing ore and an iron furnace in northern New Jersey at Port Oram, New Jersey which was located close to the Morris Canal and railroads.
33.
Joseph Wharton purchased a coal mine in western Pennsylvania, constructing for the workers a town of 85 houses and stores along the railway.
34.
Joseph Wharton purchased coal land in West Virginia, iron and copper mines in Michigan, and gold mines in Arizona and Nevada.
35.
Joseph Wharton became involved in the Reading and Lehigh railroads and several others, arranging spur lines with the railroads to carry ore and finished metal products.
36.
Joseph Wharton maintained an extensive business correspondence and in later life maintained this practice through his vacations.
37.
Joseph Wharton was a colleague of leaders such as inventors Ezra Cornell, Elias Howe and Thomas Edison, and entrepreneur Cornelius Vanderbilt.
38.
Joseph Wharton became the largest shareholder with a position on the board of managers, and eventually purchased a controlling share of the company.
39.
Similar contracts gave the company, renamed the Bethlehem Steel Company, a consistent source of income, and Joseph Wharton made slow but steady profits.
40.
Over several decades, Joseph Wharton lobbied successfully in Washington, DC for tariff laws protecting US manufacturing.
41.
Joseph Wharton was a defender of large business and evolved into a staunch Republican.
42.
Joseph Wharton successfully lobbied for the use of nickel in the US coinage, but his lobbying for nickel tariffs was only partially successful, probably because he had a virtual monopoly on production in the US In 1873 the world was in a very trying economic depression and many industrial firms went bankrupt.
43.
Joseph Wharton became widely known as a leader of the Industrial League of manufacturing concerns, and the main lobbyist and President of the American Iron and Steel Institute.
44.
Joseph Wharton was a personal friend and consultant with several presidents including Grant, Hayes, and Harrison.
45.
Joseph Wharton successfully lobbied for a bill in the Pennsylvania General Assembly supporting Limited Partnerships to allow more participation of capital in enterprises with risk.
46.
Joseph Wharton was a scientist interested in the natural world, and wrote scientific papers on a variety of topics including astronomy and metallurgy, presenting several to the American Philosophical Society.
47.
Joseph Wharton has been elected to the Society in 1869.
48.
Joseph Wharton was curious, and one morning when a light snow was falling, collected some from a field near his house, melted and evaporated it, studying the remaining particles under a microscope which he had on hand for metallurgy.
49.
Joseph Wharton visited a ship that had come to port in Philadelphia, having sailed from Manila, a course that had taken it a few hundred miles from Krakatoa.
50.
Joseph Wharton obtained some pumice from one of the ship's crew, compared it with the dust he had collected, and found almost identical particles.
51.
Joseph Wharton wrote a paper about the use of the Doppler effect on the color of light emitted by binary stars to determine their distance from Earth, and made the analogy to a train whistle which changes tone as it passes.
52.
Joseph Wharton was one of the most accomplished metallurgists in America during his lifetime, certainly the most widely known.
53.
Joseph Wharton gave generously, building a Friends Meeting on campus and contributing to a science building.
54.
Joseph Wharton was often on campus and gave many commencement addresses.
55.
Joseph Wharton wrote extensively on economic matters, including protective tariffs and business cycles.
56.
Joseph Wharton conceived of a school that would teach how to develop and run a business, and to anticipate and deal with the cycles of economic activity.
57.
In 1881 Joseph Wharton donated $100,000 to the University of Pennsylvania to found a "School of Finance and Economy" for this purpose.
58.
Joseph Wharton specified that the Wharton School faculty advocate economic protectionism, as he had when lobbying for American businesses in Washington.
59.
The Joseph Wharton School was the first to include such a practical focus on business, finance, and management.
60.
In 2023, the Joseph Wharton School fell off of the Financial Times' 2023 MBA rankings for the first time since the ranking's inception.
61.
Joseph Wharton was active to near the end of his life both physically and in business affairs.
62.
Joseph Wharton continued to oversee his holdings in coke manufacture in Pennsylvania and iron in northern New Jersey.
63.
Joseph Wharton read widely in literature and was an accomplished poet.
64.
Joseph Wharton is buried in the family plot at Laurel Hill Cemetery in Philadelphia.
65.
In 1908, Joseph Wharton created Fisher Park, a 23-acre park in the Olney neighborhood in Philadelphia, donating the land on his deathbed to the City of Philadelphia as a "Christmas gift".
66.
Joseph Wharton was inducted into the Junior Achievement US Business Hall of Fame in 2004.
67.
Joseph Wharton is the great-great-great grandfather of former UCLA and former Miami Dolphins quarterback Josh Rosen.