George Frederick Baer (September 26, 1842 – April 26, 1914) was an American lawyer who was the President of the Philadelphia and Reading Railroad and spokesman for the owners during the Anthracite Coal Strike of 1902.

At the age of thirteen, Baer dropped out of school and became a "printer's devil" at a local newspaper, the Somerset Democrat, and later attended Franklin and Marshall College.

He and his brother acquired the Democrat in 1861, and in 1862 he raised a company of volunteers for the Union Army during the American Civil War.

[3] In 1901, Baer was installed by financier J. P. Morgan as the president of the Reading Railroad after the retirement of his predecessor, Joseph Smith Harris.

The Reading was a major employer in the region, and Baer refused to put down the strike or speak to the strikers, citing Social Darwinist ideas.