Joseph Wharton - Business Empire

Business Empire

Wharton traveled widely and became involved in many industrial enterprises such as mines, factories and railroads. He 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. Wharton also purchased land containing ore and an iron furnace in northern New Jersey at Port Oram, New Jersey (now Wharton, New Jersey) which was located close to the Morris Canal and railroads. He purchased a coal mine in western Pennsylvania, constructing for the workers a town of 85 houses and stores along the railway. He also purchased coal land in West Virginia, iron and copper mines in Michigan, and gold mines in Arizona and Nevada. 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. He maintained an extensive business correspondence and in later life maintained this practice through his vacations. Wharton was a colleague of leaders such as inventors Ezra Cornell, Elias Howe and Thomas Edison, and entrepreneur Cornelius Vanderbilt. His management style evolved throughout the latter half of the 1800s, making use of new technology for communication, transportation, and production, so that he controlled many industries profitably on a larger scale than was previously possible.