Zinc and nickel manufacturing
In 1853, Wharton joined the Pennsylvania and Lehigh Zinc Company near Bethlehem, Pennsylvania. He first managed the mining operation and then the zinc oxide works. Wharton negotiated a new charter for the works, and in the difficult financial environment of 1857–1858, he took over control of the zinc works, and managed it carefully so that it turned a profit. In 1859, he developed the first production of metallic zinc, or spelter, in the United States. He brought in experienced workers from the Vieille Montagne works in Belgium, built sixteen furnaces and by 1863 had produced nine million pounds of spelter.
Wharton was asked by James Pollock, the Director of the United States Mint, to secure an American source of nickel to provide raw material for the minting of one-cent coins. In 1863, he sold his interest in zinc and started the manufacture of nickel at Camden, New Jersey. He took a controlling interest in the Gap Mining Company, a nickel mine and refining works in Nickel Mines, Pennsylvania. In 1866, Congress passed a law authorizing the creation of a 3-cent coin consisting of 75% copper and 25% nickel, and the nickel, as it became known, was created.
He partnered with Theodor Fleitmann for several years to improve the manufacturing process. The Camden plant was located on the east side of 10th Street, adjacent to Cooper Creek, and had several large brick buildings and smokestacks. Wharton renamed the Camden plant the American Nickel Works, and his office there became his center of operations. In July 1868, the plant burned down but was quickly rebuilt with brick and stone replacing the original wood structure. Wharton had success due to his production of the first in the world malleable nickel. He also created nickel magnets, and received a gold medal at the Paris Exposition of 1878 for his inventions.[2]
For the next 25 years, Wharton's operations were the largest nickel manufacturer in the United States and produced 17% of the world's supply. The surface deposits at the Gap mine were eventually depleted, and Wharton began to purchase nickel ore from mines in the Sudbury Basin.
After the American Civil War, demand for coinage declined and the amount of nickel purchased from Wharton by the United States Mint decreased. Wharton became frustrated with the Mint since they had requested that he enter the nickel industry. He did not sell any nickel to the mint in 1870 and 1871 and temporarily closed the plant in 1870. He threatened to completely close the only nickel manufacturer in the United States.
By the 1870s, Wharton had made several million dollars in profit from his nickel business.[1] He made huge profits from 1873 to 1876 by supplying Prussia with nickel to mint their coins. In 1877, the price of nickel plummeted due to new reserves discovered in New Caledonia and the formation of the French conglomerate Société Le Nickel. By 1900, the nickel industry outlook was fading and Wharton and a group of other American and Canadian nickel enterprises formed the International Nickel Company in 1902.[3] In 1905, Wharton's American Nickel Works were merged with the Orford Copper Company which ended Wharton's involvement in nickel manufacturing.
Water supply efforts
The Wharton family's Bellevue Mansion estate in North Philadelphia, along with several others nearby that had been annexed into the city, were threatened with condemnation by the city for the construction of a new reservoir to hold potable water. Wharton started purchasing land in South Jersey in the 1870s, eventually acquiring 150 sqmi in the Pinelands, which contained an aquifer replenished by several rivers and lakes.[4] The water from the Pinelands was relatively pure and he planned to export the water to Philadelphia. Wharton suggested that a city-controlled company could develop the necessary water mains and pump, funded by public purchase of company shares and bonds. Opposition to the plan emerged in Philadelphia and in New Jersey, and eventually, a law was passed in New Jersey preventing the export of water.
Mining and railroads
Wharton traveled widely and became involved in many industrial enterprises such as mines, factories and railroads. He started several enterprises on South Jersey property, including a menhaden fish factory that produced fertilizer,[1] a modern forestry planting operation, and cranberry and sugar beet farms. Wharton purchased land in Port Oram, New Jersey, to expand his iron operations. He added furnaces to the site with the capacity to produce over 1,000 tons of iron per day.
He owned over 5,000 acres of ore-containing land. He had extensive ownership of coal-containing lands, with 7,500 acres in Indiana County, Pennsylvania, and 24,000 acres in West Virginia and New York. He owned iron and copper mines in Michigan, and gold mines in Arizona and Nevada. Wharton became involved in railroads including the Reading, Lehigh Valley Railroad, San Antonio Railroad, Arkansas Pass Railroad, Oregon Pacific Railroad,[5] and Hibernia Mine Railroad.[6]
Bethlehem Steel
In the 1870s Wharton began to invest in Bethlehem Iron Company which produced pig iron and steel for railroads.[2] He became the largest shareholder with a position on the board of managers, and eventually purchased a controlling share of the company. He was the largest single producer of pig iron in the United States. In 1885, Wharton successfully bid a contract with the United States Navy for forged steel armor, and in 1886 he visited England (Whitworth Co.) and France (Schneider Co.) to research the designs for a plant to forge steel of higher quality. With these designs, Bethlehem Iron built the first plant to forge high-strength steel in the United States. The plant fabricated armor plates and guns for warships.
Science
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. He was elected to the Society in 1869.[7]
In the winter of 1883–1884 there was a period of several months when sunsets were extraordinarily red worldwide. Some imagined that the red color was from dust dispersed in the atmosphere worldwide by the volcano Krakatoa, which erupted. Others imagined that the reddish hue might come from iron and steel furnaces because they were known to create a reddish-brown dust. 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. The particles looked like "irregular, flattish, blobby" glass particles. He visited a ship from Manila that arrived in port in Philadelphia, a course that took a few hundred miles from Krakatoa. It had been slowed by a huge amount of pumice floating in the ocean, evidently spewed out by Krakatoa. Wharton obtained some pumice from one of the ship's crew, compared it with the dust he had collected, and found almost identical particles. In 1893, Wharton presented a paper about the dust to the 150th anniversary meeting of the American Philosophical Society.[8][9]
