HIST1302-Andrew Carnegie

He was one of the "Captains of Industry" who led America into a new industrial era during the late nineteenth century. His speciality was steel; others pioneered in transportation, oil, and communication.

Dumferline, Scotland -- The "A" marks the spot on a modern Google map.

Power linen-looms came to that region of Scotland, undercutting his business.

Working his way up in the world he was employed in all three businesses.

"The railroad became almost universally the standard for efficiency and order." In Andrew Carnegie's case, "Just as he had assembled a mental map of the business establishments of Pittsburgh [as a telegraph boy], Carnegie now had a picture of the Pennsylvania Railroad system. He knew its equipment, workers, and customers; and he knew how changes in one area would affect conditions in another."

The steel industry

He invented a machine, the "Bessemer Converter," which could transform molten iron into stronger steel quickly and efficiently.

William R. Jones

Its iron ore fed Carnegies steel works in Pennsylvania. And Carnegie himself owned some of the means of transportation from the Mesabi Range to Pittsburg.

Carnegie steel provided the framework for each.

Morgan paid Carnegie $492 million: that's about $20 billion in today's money. The new company was named "U. S. Steel."

Triumphant Democracy

They were "brilliant entrepreneurs" who led the industrial transformation of America during the late nineteenth century.

He pioneered "social Darwinism," a philosophy that applied Charles Darwin's ideas on evolution to the human world. Men like Andrew Carnegie took comfort in Spencer's idea that "the survival of the fittest" (men like Carnegie and Rockefeller) uplifted human society as a whole. In other words, getting rich was a good thing!

Andrew Carnegie was a hard-driving, even ruthless, businessman.

Carnegie spread a rumor that the Duquesne rails lacked "homogeneity." The term meant nothing—Carnegie simply invented it. But this false charge dampened interest in the Duquesne rails.

"Everywhere the yellow mud of the streets lay kneaded into sticky masses, through which groups of pale, lean men slouched in faded garments, grimy with soot and dirt of the mills."

In 1892 Carnegie authorized Henry Clay Frick to "break" the union at Homestead, known as "the Amalgamated Association of Iron, Steel, and Tin Workers." Frick brought in an army of "Pinkerton" detectives, and in the ensuing battle 14 men were killed and 163 injured. The plant reopened without the union, but the episode left a dark stain on Carnegie's reputation.

Basically, fan mail!

He gave money to his workers' pension fund, libraries, church organs, and many other causes. (The picture above is the Carnegie library he gave to Spokane, Washington.)

Andrew Carnegie

"The industrial world he made... was neither moral nor immoral in its own right. Great cities, industrial plants, transportation facilities, entertainment industries, and other features of twentieth-century prosperity grew out of the industrial revolution, radically altering the material conditions of American life. Later generations would address the problems that industrialism created, seeking to improve the rewards of labor and to reduce industry's harm to the environment. But in doing so they would modify rather than remove the new world that men like Andrew Carnegie had built."