George Frederick Baer (1842-1914) worked closely with legendary financier J. P. Morgan during American industry's most expansionary era. He headed the Philadelphia and Reading Railway Co., which carried coal from Morgan-owned coal mines in Pennsylvania to the cities of the East Coast. Baer is perhaps most remembered for his opposition to labor unions.

Baer was born on September 26, 1842, in Pennsylvania's Somerset County near a town called Lavansville. The family of his father, Major Solomon Baer, had emigrated from Germany and settled in the area in the 18th century. Baer was educated at the local Somerset Institute and the Somerset Academy, and began an apprenticeship at the local newspaper, the Somerset Democrat, as a teen. At the age of 15, he enrolled at Franklin and Marshall College in Lancaster, Pennsylvania. However, Baer left in 1861, when hostilities erupted between the North and South and first shots were fired in the U...