When he was 19, Wharton apprenticed with an accountant for two years and became proficient in
business methods and
bookkeeping. In 1847, he partnered with his older brother Rodman to start a business manufacturing
white lead. Wharton also partnered with his brother in a
cottonseed oil business for four years but disbanded the venture in 1849. He started a business manufacturing
bricks in 1849 using a
patented machine which formed dry clay into bricks. He left the brick-making business due to the significant competition and
cyclical business swings.
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. 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 in the
Pinelands, which contained an
aquifer replenished by several rivers and lakes. 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, and
Hibernia Mine Railroad.
Bethlehem Steel In the 1870s Wharton began to invest in
Bethlehem Iron Company which produced
pig iron and
steel for railroads. 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. Wharton also wrote a paper about the use of the
Doppler effect on the color of light emitted by
binary stars to determine their distance from
Earth, and made the analogy to a train whistle which changes tone as it passes. Wharton served as president of the
American Iron and Steel Association and as a member of the
Iron and Steel Institute. He led the electoral tickets for the Republican Party nomination of
William McKinley for president. ==Philanthropy==