Andrew Carnegie helped to develop the American economy. He made
a company that was in the Dow Jones industrials. He introduced the
Bessemer method of steel production to the United States. Think what could
have happened without his companies existence, who would have produced
steel for transcontinental railroads, the weapons that protect our country
against communist threats. Carnegie was not actually native born though, he
was born in Scotland and moved to the states at the age of 13. Carnegie had
no formal education but quickly learned that the land of opportunity.
Contained the opportunity to exploit the workers who made up his adopted
country.
He like Rockefeller and Morgan bought their way out of army duty by
paying a $300 fee. In 1872 after seeing the Bessemer process in England he
returned to the U.S. and built a multi-million dollar steel mill. His business
was allowed to survive because the government put in place a number of
laws that would make steel made in other countries more expensive. No book
said exactly how these laws were put in place, but I can imagine that the
goodwill of politicians can be bought. In 1880 of production Carnegie made
1.5 million dollars a year in profits, twenty years later it was $40 million per
year. This at the expense of men having to work twelve hours a day.
While this point was not made in the books I possessed, I know that Steel
plants are not the best to work in from a health standpoint. I can only imagine
what work conditions were like back then. There is a story widely accepted
as truth that it was at a dinner that Carnegie wrote the price of which he
would sell his company for. The number was 492 million sold to J. P.