Andrew Carnegie

How have Andrew Carnegie’s steel expansion and philanthropist view influenced the U.S?



Andrew Carnegie was one of the most successful businessmen and most recognized philanthropists in history. He led the enormous expansion of the American steel industry in the late 19th century[1], becoming a major player in the Industrial Revolution. Much of Carnegie’s success came fromhis extraordinary ability to recognize and exploit the opportunities being created by industrialization. He is remembered for many accomplishments and his influences on the railroad, stock market,steel and iron industries, as well as on on immigration and the regulations of labor force. Not similar to others, Carnegie’s idea of being rich meant having the ability to help others; he contributed tothe construction of improvement of education, free public libraries, and promoted international law and international peace. He used his fortune to improve conditions in society and the economy and this is why history will record him as the most influential person of the twentieth century.
Andrew Carnegie was born in Dunfermline, Fife, Scotland, on November 25, 1835. He was theoldest child of Margaret and Will Carnegie. Carnegie's father worked as a linen weaver and he was also involved in a British working class movement in Scotland, which believed in making conditions better for the working man. Carnegie’s mom worked binding shoes. The family lived in a weaver’s cottage with only one main room. The Carnegie’s were a poor, but educated and humble class working family withstrong values that led Andrew successfully help others later in is life. He never attended college but throughout his life, learned much from reading books. In 1848, fearing for the survival of their family, the Carnegie’s soon decided to leave Scotland to settle in a little town called Allegheny, located in the state of Pennsylvania. Rather than going to school, Carnegie soon started to work in afactory as a bobbin boy, earning $1.20 a week until finding a job as a telegraph messenger the year after, where he moved up to a telegraph operator position in 1851. His first and most vital experience in railroads was when he worked the Pennsylvania Railroad company in 1853, as the assistant and telegrapher of Thomas Scott, one of the railroad’s top officials, where he learned about therailroad industry and business and where he was earning $4.00 per week. Three years later, because of his rapid advanced skills, he was promoted to a superintendent. While working, Carnegie also started to make investments, specially in oil. He invested $40,000 in Story Farm on Oil Creek in Pennsylvania, where in one year, the farm yielded more than $1,000,000 in cash dividends.He made wise choices thatbrought him good results and eventually led him to leave the rail road in 1865, seeking to focus more on his business interests, including the Keystone Bridge Company, where he promoted the idea of converting the old wooden bridges into sturdier, iron and steel ridges to increase productivity. Meanwhile, he got married to Louise Whitfield in 1887, and in 1897 their daughter Margaret was born.Carnegie made most of his fortune through the steel industry, by managing the most extensive steel and iron operations ever owned by an individual in the United States. Since he had been working in the railroad business, he was convinced that the American railroad system had to switch to steel rails as soon as they were cheaply available, so he withdrew from his other investment activityto concentrate on steel manufacturing. He adapted the Bessemer process for steel making, an industrial process for the mass-production of steel from molten pig iron, which Carnegie had witnessed on a visit to Bessemer’s steel plants in England in 1872, that allowed him make a cheap efficient mass production of steel [2]. In result, the steel price dropped and was rapidly adopted for railway...