Andrew Carnegie: The Men Who Built America

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The “Men Who Built America” took many risks to make the country successful as it is today. With all the railroads being built and all the oil being produced, out came some big rewards. Andrew Carnegie was a major philanthropist an American industrialist who generated a prosperity in the steel industry. In search of better economic opportunities, the Carnegie family moved to Allegheny City (Pittsburgh). He stopped going to school when he arrived in America and earned $1.20 a week as a bobbin boy in a cotton factory. He was holding a wide variety of jobs, making him ambitious and hard-working. One of his jobs was a messenger in a telegraph office and secretary and telegraph operator. He was doing this for the superintendent of the Pittsburgh division of the PA railroad. Later in his career, …show more content…
He founded and iron bridge building company and a telegraph firm while he expanded his railroad-related investments. While doing so, he often used inside connections to win contracts. Carnegie had become a very wealthy man in his early 30s. Near Pittsburg in the early 1870s, Carnegie co-founded his first steel company. Maximizing profits and minimizing insufficiencies through ownership of factories made him a steel empire. His main prophets came through his Carnegie Steel Company in 1892. At his homestead steel mill in Pennsylvania, a violent labor strike broke out. Henry Clay Frick locked workers out of the plant after a workers protested wage cuts. During the time of the protest, Carnegie was on vacation in Scotland. Frick called 300 pinkerton guards to protect the plant, but ten guards died during the strike. After five months, the union was defeated and the labor movement at Pittsburg-area steel mills was crippled for the next four decades. J.P. Morgan made Andrew Carnegie one of the richest men in the world after purchasing Carnegie Steel for $480 million dollars. Later in Carnegie’s life, he gave away
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