George Frederick Baer was an
American lawyer who became the president of the Philadelphia and Reading
Railroad. He also served as the spokesperson for the owners in the Anthracite Coal Strike of 1902.
Baer was born in Somerset,
Pennsylvania. He studied at Franklin and Marshall College. During the Civil
War, he formed a company of volunteers to help the Union Army. He was the
captain of the 133rd Pennsylvania Volunteers stationed in
Chancellorsville, Fredericksburg and Antietam.
After the Civil War, Baer practiced
law and became the owner of a local newspaper The Democrat. J.P. Morgan appointed him as president of
Philadelphia and Reading Railroad in 1901. When a strike by the United Mine
Workers broke in 1902, he cited Social
Darwinism and was treated as an example of arrogance. President
Theodore Roosevelt intervened and the strike was settled.
Baer became the president of his
alma mater Franklin and Marshall College in 1894 until his death on April 26,
1914.
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