Frederick Henry Prince

Frederick Henry Prince was an American business leader. Through a series of investments, he expanded the modest inheritance he received from his father. In 1890, he incorporated the Chicago Junction Railroad and Union Stock Yards Company, which took over all the capital stock of the Union Stock Yards and Transit Company and a major portion of the stock of the Chicago Junction Railroad Company. In 1905, he founded south Chicago's Central Manufacturing District; [http://www.encyclopedia.chicagohistory.org/pages/785.html] he served as one of the CMD's two trustees from its founding. He also staged a proxy fight culminating in his winning control over Armour and Company, a badly overcapitalized meat-packing firm which he was able to restore to profitability after overhauling its management, modernizing its operations, closing unprofitable plants, and shifting attention from marketing fresh meat to processing and selling higher-margin specialty items. Just before the Great Stock Market Crash of 1929, he liquidated all of his holdings; during the Great Depression, he became one of the richest men in America. Prince was a bitter critic of the New Deal and particularly the Roosevelt Brain Trust. He married Eleanor Edwards in 1940 and had two sons and a daughter. He was sometimes called "Mr. Capitalism."

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