While Andrew Carnegie didn’t invent steel, he was able to explore steel production while making it more efficient. Through his exploration, he encountered setbacks that ultimately helped shape labor laws and eventually exchanged his company for a life of philanthropy which still has a lasting effect today. Carnegie managed to come from humble beginnings, as he immigrated to America from Dunfermline, Scotland at age thirteen (Carnegie 27). Carnegie shifted his economic status and was able to become the richest man in the world. He was unable to achieve his great fortune and social prominence without obstacles, but he still managed to change the United States for the better through his philanthropy and his sponsorship of architectural projects. …show more content…
His expertise in handloom weaving was obsolete with the use of mechanical technologies. Carnegie’s mother moved them to America, where both Andrew and his father got jobs. Andrew made a dollar and twenty cents a week. Prior to his success, Andrew stated in his autobiography, The Autobiography of Andrew Carnegie, “I have made millions since, but none of those millions gave me such happiness as my first week’s earnings,” (Carnegie 35). Carnegie then moved to a job keeping books and running a steam engine for Mr. Hay, while he also attended night school to improve his booking. He earned more money and was able to further support his family. He kept progressing and his uncle quickly found another job for him as a messenger in a telegraph office. Carnegie was always very ambitious and he quickly memorized the streets of Pittsburgh and the names and faces of all the important business men he encountered. He then moved on to become a telegraph operator and the superintendent of the Pittsburgh division of the Pennsylvania …show more content…
He made sure he was the one controlling all of his prices, and no one else could raise prices and take away part of his profits. An example of this is his merger with Henry Clay Frick’s Coke company. He started with about eleven percent of the company, but soon owned over half of the company (Rags). Carnegie did everything to cut costs. He overworked and underpaid his employees which eventually lead to the biggest encounter the steel industry had seen. The Homestead Strike at Carnegie’s Homestead steel mill left three townspeople and seven Pinkerton Detectives dead. The events leading up to the Homestead strike started when the contract between Carnegie and the union, Amalgamated Association of Iron and Steel Workers, that many Homestead workers belonged
Despite the negative encounters of Andrew Carnegie’s Steel Company, the exploration and exchange of Carnegie Steel is that the steel was cheap. This had a positive impact on the United States because steel fed national growth, steel meant more jobs, national prestige, and a higher quality of life for
Andrew Carnegie was a man who was born poor, but wanted to change many lives for those who were like him. Since he was able to walk, he started to work he was a bobbin boy in Pittsburg. Carnegie would work 12 hours a day to
Andrew Carnegie, was a strong-minded man who believed in equal distribution and different forms to manage wealth. One of the methods he suggested was to tax revenues to help out the public. He believed in successors enriching society by paying taxes and death taxes. Carnegie’s view did not surprise me because it was the only form people could not unequally distribute their wealth amongst the public, and the mediocre American economy. Therefore, taxations would lead to many more advances in the American economy and for public purposes.
The unions resorted to many forms of tactics such as boycotts, picketing, and the less prominent “closed shop”. The most prevalent of these methods, however, was the formation of riots. During the late 19th century riots included: the Haymarket Square Riots (1886), the Homestead Lockout, and the Pullman Car Company strike. The Haymarket Square Riots of 1886 took place at the McCormick plant in Chicago, Illinois in response to the worker’s need for an eight hour workday. The first two days were innate, but the third day was where the the situation actually instigated the cause. The owner of the plant, McCormick, attempted to bring strikebreakers (scabs), and a battle had begun between the scabs and the strikers. The riot, wistfully, ended the lives of four men when the police began to attempt to impede and halter the situation. These four deaths initiated a chain reaction resulting in the calling for the revenge of the four men by German radical Johann Most. Despite Johann’s reaction, 200 more Chicago policemen ordered the remaining strikers to leave the area. In the crowd, in the moment, a homemade bomb was hurled leading in the death of one policeman; acting as a predecessor of events, this event lead to a shooting between the policemen and the strikers concluding with the death of four workers and seven more policemen; entirely approximately one hundred people were injured. The Haymarket Riots caused public opinion to turn against labor. The Homestead Lockout took place in Homestead, Pennsylvania at Andrew Carnegie’s steel plant and was instigated by Henry Clay Frick’s wage cut. In this riot workers walked out of the company and then Frick ordered company doors to be locked and trapped the workers inside. Employees rebelled and caused about 200 Pinkerton detectives to come up the river to protect company property and created a battle.
Andrew Carnegie was a Scottish American industrialist who led the enormous expansion of the American steel industry in the late 19th century. He built a leadership role as a philanthropist for America and the British Empire. During the last 18 years of his life, he gave away to charities, foundations, and universities about $350 million – almost 90 percent of his fortune. His 1889 article proclaiming "The Gospel of Wealth" called on the rich to use their wealth to improve society, and it stimulated a wave of philanthropy.
Growing up as a young boy in Scotland, Carnegie's family was not very wealthy. They immigrated to America where Carnegie went from working as a bobbin boy, making $1.20 per hour, to making millions of dollars later in his life. Carnegie did not become wealthy by unethical means, as a Robber Baron would. Instead he worked very hard and wise to get to where he was during that time. Andrew Carnegie came from "rags to riches" in his lifetime and it paid off.
Andrew Carnegie believes in a system based on principles and responsibility. The system is Individualism and when everyone strives towards the same goals the system is fair and prosperous. Carnegie’s essay is his attempt to show people a way to reach an accommodation between individualism and fairness. This system can only work if everyone knows and participates in his or her responsibilities. I will discuss Carnegie’s thesis, his arguments and the possible results of his goals.
To understand Carnegie before he became a wealthy man, he grew up poor working for $1.20 a week (Document LV). At the age of 50 years, he took a risk by investing in a package delivery company. His gamble paid off and he gained money to start his company, Carnegie’s Steel Company. Eventually, his company grew and caused
In Harold C. Livesay’s Andrew Carnegie and the rise of Big Business, Andrew Carnegie’s struggles and desires throughout his life are formed into different challenges of being the influential leader of the United States of America. The book also covers the belief of the American Dream in that people can climb up the ladder of society by hard work and the dream of becoming an influential citizen, just as Carnegie did.
Of all the rags-to-riches tales in history, there are none that can compare to the likes of Andrew Carnegie’s. Although Carnegie was a man whose character fell somewhere between callous and benevolent, his abundant contributions to America are nothing short of remarkable. His journey is an exemplary display of the true opportunity that you are given in America regardless of the card you have been dealt. While his sheer wealth was very notable, his philanthropic influences are not to go unnoticed either. Andrew Carnegie was one of the first businessmen to promote public-spirited philosophies that simultaneously achieved individual profit and benefited the America as a whole.
Andrew Carnegie was the Scottish - American industrialist responsible for the steel industry’s expansion. During this time period, America was in the Industrial Revolution. This essay will discuss Carnegie’s early life, career, his later life as a philanthropist, and his legacy.
In the documents titled, William Graham Sumner on Social Darwinism and Andrew Carnegie Explains the Gospel of Wealth, Sumner and Carnegie both analyze their perspective on the idea on “social darwinism.” To begin with, both documents argue differently about wealth, poverty and their consequences. Sumner is a supporter of social darwinism. In the aspects of wealth and poverty he believes that the wealthy are those with more capital and rewards from nature, while the poor are “those who have inherited disease and depraved appetites, or have been brought up in vice and ignorance, or have themselves yielded to vice, extravagance, idleness, and imprudence” (Sumner, 36). The consequences of Sumner’s views on wealth and poverty is that they both contribute to the idea of inequality and how it is not likely for the poor to be of equal status with the wealthy. Furthermore, Carnegie views wealth and poverty as a reciprocative relation. He does not necessarily state that the wealthy and poor are equal, but he believes that the wealthy are the ones who “should use their wisdom, experiences, and wealth as stewards for the poor” (textbook, 489). Ultimately, the consequences of
The Homestead Strike, also known as the Homestead Steel Strike, Pinkerton Rebellion, or Homestead Massacre, was an industrial lockout and strike which began on June 30, 1892, culminating in a battle between strikers and private security agents on July 6, 1892. The battle was one of the most serious disputes in U.S. labor history, third behind the Ludlow Massacre and the Battle of Blair Mountain. The dispute occurred at the Homestead Steel Works in the Pittsburgh area town of Homestead, Pennsylvania, between the Amalgamated Association of Iron and Steel Workers and the Carnegie Steel Company. The result was a major defeat for the union and a setback for their efforts to unionize steelworkers.
Born in Dunfermline, Scotland in 1835, Andrew Carnegie will soon aid in shaping the industrialization and urbanization movement in the 19th and 20th centuries. His early life leads up to his innovations and the becoming of being the wealthiest American of his time.
Carnegie saw how bad the wooden railroads were, so he proceeded to slowly replace them with iron ones. Carnegie's charm, perception, and hard work led to becoming one of the world's most famous men of the time, and led to the first corporation in the world with a market capitalization in excess of one billion when he sold his companies to John Morgan who called them United States Steel Corporation.