The New Industrial Era: The Rise of Andrew Carnegie
American Realities, 2,3 The New Industrial Era: The Rise of Andrew Carnegie
(This outline is not a “substitute” for reading the chapter, but it may help you review the story and understand it better.)
Overview: During the late nineteenth century the United States emerged as the leading industrial nation in the world. The growth of big business affected where Americans lived, what they consumed, how they worked, and what they thought. If Rip Van Winkle had slept from 1870 to 1910, he would have seen changes far greater than those wrought by the American Revolution. This chapter tells the story of American industrialization of that time, focusing on he story of steel and the career of Andrew Carnegie. We explore how he made his fortune, treated his employees and rivals, and distributed his wealth. And with Carnegie as an example, we consider the question: were the captains of industry indispensible leaders in an age of industrial wonders or “robber barons” injuring others in their greedy pursuit of wealth?
Outline:
1. Background: from a world of wood to a world of steel, one step removed from nature, “iron horse,” revolutionized American life.
2. Andrew Carnegie's Early Life: youth Dunfermline- Scotland, his father’s weaving business, enter the power loom, Margaret, machine-produced linens, William Carnegie’s ruin, immigration to America (1848) and Pittsburgh, Scottish legacy, Herbert Spencer, “The Smoky City,” supplies of iron and coal, poverty, broken man, Slabtown and a life of poverty, the bobbin factory, $1.20 a week, “begrimed with coal dirt,” dipping the bobbins in a foul-smelling oil, vomit, the O’Reilly Telegraph Company, Andrew Carnegie’s reading, Morse code, Pittsburgh’s business community, faces of all the proprietors, position as operator, “I felt that my foot was upon the ladder and that I was bound to climb,” double entry, provide emergency telegraph service after a storm, “man of the world,” his father on the open deck of a steamboat, Thomas Scott, the Pennsylvania Railroad, importance of trains, New England textile mills, carefully planned and coordinated, collection of impersonal statistical data on costs and labor, Henry David Thoreau, " one well-conducted institution regulates a whole country," "railroad fashion," Carnegie became superintendent of the western division, new ideas for increasing the railroad’s efficiency, mental art of business, Carnegie at $50,000 per year, various business enterprises, putting “his eggs into one basket,” resigned his position with the Pennsylvania Railroad, financial interests, telegraph lines, an oil company, grain elevators, Pullman cars, railroads.
(This outline is not a “substitute” for reading the chapter, but it may help you review the story and understand it better.)
Overview: During the late nineteenth century the United States emerged as the leading industrial nation in the world. The growth of big business affected where Americans lived, what they consumed, how they worked, and what they thought. If Rip Van Winkle had slept from 1870 to 1910, he would have seen changes far greater than those wrought by the American Revolution. This chapter tells the story of American industrialization of that time, focusing on he story of steel and the career of Andrew Carnegie. We explore how he made his fortune, treated his employees and rivals, and distributed his wealth. And with Carnegie as an example, we consider the question: were the captains of industry indispensible leaders in an age of industrial wonders or “robber barons” injuring others in their greedy pursuit of wealth?
Outline:
1. Background: from a world of wood to a world of steel, one step removed from nature, “iron horse,” revolutionized American life.
2. Andrew Carnegie's Early Life: youth Dunfermline- Scotland, his father’s weaving business, enter the power loom, Margaret, machine-produced linens, William Carnegie’s ruin, immigration to America (1848) and Pittsburgh, Scottish legacy, Herbert Spencer, “The Smoky City,” supplies of iron and coal, poverty, broken man, Slabtown and a life of poverty, the bobbin factory, $1.20 a week, “begrimed with coal dirt,” dipping the bobbins in a foul-smelling oil, vomit, the O’Reilly Telegraph Company, Andrew Carnegie’s reading, Morse code, Pittsburgh’s business community, faces of all the proprietors, position as operator, “I felt that my foot was upon the ladder and that I was bound to climb,” double entry, provide emergency telegraph service after a storm, “man of the world,” his father on the open deck of a steamboat, Thomas Scott, the Pennsylvania Railroad, importance of trains, New England textile mills, carefully planned and coordinated, collection of impersonal statistical data on costs and labor, Henry David Thoreau, " one well-conducted institution regulates a whole country," "railroad fashion," Carnegie became superintendent of the western division, new ideas for increasing the railroad’s efficiency, mental art of business, Carnegie at $50,000 per year, various business enterprises, putting “his eggs into one basket,” resigned his position with the Pennsylvania Railroad, financial interests, telegraph lines, an oil company, grain elevators, Pullman cars, railroads.
Caption reads: “A Bessemer Converter Turning Iron into Steel”
3. Andrew Carnegie and the Steel Industry: the many uses and importance of iron-a brief history, he was attracted to iron, essential material in a growing America, Henry Bessemer, blast furnace , best qualities of both kinds of iron, Carnegie- McCandless and Company, Henry Bessemer and the blast furnace, J. Edgar Thompson Works, matters of management, marketing, and expansion, Capt. William R. Jones, same salary as that of President Ulysses S. Grant, $25,000 per year, Jones Mixer, 250 tons of pig iron, “Captain Bill,” the Johnstown flood, Jones’s funeral, he closed the mill, a “hang”—a block in the flow of molten iron in a furnaces, reduced to tears, doing things “railroad fashion,” Carnegies management skills, from railroad-building to city-building, the Carnegie Steel Company (1892), Minnesota’s Mesabi Range, $25 million in profits, the Brooklyn Bridge and the Washington Monument.
4. Andrew Carnegie and his “legacy”: accomplished salesman, prices were low, he was their friend, horizontal integration, two views on his contributions to humanity: selling the company, J. P. Morgan, U. S. Steel, Charles Schwab, the creation of wealth as a “noble endeavor,” “The Gospel of Wealth,” man who dies rich “dies disgraced,” sell a half-billion-dollar steel company, J. P. Morgan was interested in expanding his steel interests, $492 million, “Mr. Carnegie, I want to congratulate you on being the richest man in the world,” $1.4 billion, the world’s first billion-dollar corporation, Carnegie’s entrepreneurial role, most articulate of the entrepreneurs, “all is well since all grows better,” “Triumphant Democracy” (1886), Homestead Works in 1889, Allegheny Bessemer Steel Company in 1890, Herbert Spencer, Social Darwinism, “survival of the fittest,” “perpetual ruthlessness,” Duquesne Steel Works and “homogeneity,” hard on his own colleagues, even harder on his competitors, Duquesne Steel Works, “esprit de corps,” the chimney-top broom, working conditions, brilliant if unscrupulous propagandist’s device, low wages and long hours, twelve hours a day, seven days a week in the hot mills, gruesome accidents, Hamlin Garland’s report, Amalgamated Association of Iron, Steel, and Tin Workers, Henry Clay Frick, Homestead Works, highly unionized, Pinkerton’s National Detective Agency, the Homestead Strike (1892), Carnegie’s view of himself, most tragic event in Carnegie’s career, friend of labor, autobiography is full of tender memories, tearful return to Dunfermline, “Gratitude and Sweet Words,” Princeton for an artificial lake, Palace of Peace at the Hague, Tuskegee Institute, independence to the Philippines, Carnegie Corporation of New York, given away most of his money, 10 percent of this wealth for his wife and daughter, pension funds, libraries, and organs, ruthless businessman and a generous philanthropist, modify rather than remove the new world.
4. Andrew Carnegie and his “legacy”: accomplished salesman, prices were low, he was their friend, horizontal integration, two views on his contributions to humanity: selling the company, J. P. Morgan, U. S. Steel, Charles Schwab, the creation of wealth as a “noble endeavor,” “The Gospel of Wealth,” man who dies rich “dies disgraced,” sell a half-billion-dollar steel company, J. P. Morgan was interested in expanding his steel interests, $492 million, “Mr. Carnegie, I want to congratulate you on being the richest man in the world,” $1.4 billion, the world’s first billion-dollar corporation, Carnegie’s entrepreneurial role, most articulate of the entrepreneurs, “all is well since all grows better,” “Triumphant Democracy” (1886), Homestead Works in 1889, Allegheny Bessemer Steel Company in 1890, Herbert Spencer, Social Darwinism, “survival of the fittest,” “perpetual ruthlessness,” Duquesne Steel Works and “homogeneity,” hard on his own colleagues, even harder on his competitors, Duquesne Steel Works, “esprit de corps,” the chimney-top broom, working conditions, brilliant if unscrupulous propagandist’s device, low wages and long hours, twelve hours a day, seven days a week in the hot mills, gruesome accidents, Hamlin Garland’s report, Amalgamated Association of Iron, Steel, and Tin Workers, Henry Clay Frick, Homestead Works, highly unionized, Pinkerton’s National Detective Agency, the Homestead Strike (1892), Carnegie’s view of himself, most tragic event in Carnegie’s career, friend of labor, autobiography is full of tender memories, tearful return to Dunfermline, “Gratitude and Sweet Words,” Princeton for an artificial lake, Palace of Peace at the Hague, Tuskegee Institute, independence to the Philippines, Carnegie Corporation of New York, given away most of his money, 10 percent of this wealth for his wife and daughter, pension funds, libraries, and organs, ruthless businessman and a generous philanthropist, modify rather than remove the new world.
