“The man who dies rich, dies disgraced”
John Perricone
Period 6
Was Andrew Carnegie a Hero?
Andrew Carnegie is known as the king of steel. He was born November 25, 1835 in Dunfermline, Scotland. In 1848 he and he and his family immigrated to America and ended up in Pittsburg, where they lived in a small house and had very little money. In 1872 he traveled to England where he met Henry Bessemer, the man who converted iron into steel. He took Bessemer’s brilliant steel-making process back to America and built several steel mills in Pennsylvania. At the age of 65 he finally decided it was time to move on from the mills and he sold the Carnegie Steel Company to J.P. Morgan for $480,000,000. A hero is someone who has good values in life, is a role model, and is inspirational to others. Andrew Carnegie was a hero because he developed successful business strategies, was a great philanthropist, and was a inspirational “rags to riches” story.
Andrew Carnegie was a hero because he developed good business strategies that led him to become a successful businessman. His most successful business strategy was his method of vertical integration, which is when one person controls all the steps in the production process. Instead of just owning the steel mills, he also owned the iron ore fields, where the iron used to make the steel came from, along with the boats and railroads used to transport the iron to his steel mills (Doc 5). Carnegie’s process of vertical integration was a business technique that improved future businesses. Also another reason why Carnegie was such a successful businessman was because he was always well informed of his finances, and some would say he was a micromanager. “Carnegie’s watch on costs never let up in his first twenty-five years in the steel business.”(Doc 3). He also was informed of other businesses finances in order to ensure that he had lower prices and more customers than his competition. Over the years