Andrew Carnegie Research Paper

Before Carnegie Became a Tycoon When the average person thinks of Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania the first thing that comes to mind is either there sports teams or that it is the birthplace of mass-produced steel. Steel is what made Pittsburgh such a major city in today’s world; without steel, it would be a normal suburban city. It only took one person to make Pittsburgh such a major thriving city, Andrew Carnegie. Without him, Pittsburgh would not be as advanced as it is today. Without Andrews’s passion we could possibly not have steel.

Ever since Andrew was a child he put his full effort into everything he did.He was taught to never give up and keep going forward with life. If he had slacked off even one day while working as a messenger boy or a telegraph operator he may not have died as a steel tycoon, or one of the brightest entrepreneurs that America has ever seen. “It was a cold and rainy night in Dunfermline,” As Joseph Wall said as he describes Andrew Carnegie’s birth. Wall gives a very detailed description of Andrew in the biography he wrote about him. It was the 25th of November in 1835, on the corner of Moodie Street and Priory lane in Scotland lived a married couple named William and Margret Carnegie in a one-story cottage.

It was around ten o’clock at night when the mid-wife came running down the attic stairs to tell the busy Damask Weaver that he just gave birth to his first healthy son. Later, they would name their baby Andrew after William’s father (Wall 3). Little did they know, that Andrew would become a multi billionaire. Andrew can greatly thank the industrial revolution that swept through Scotland, because if it never happened Andrew would of not made it to America to make millions. A new era approached Scotland leading to steam powered cotton gins. This put Andrews father out of business, and lead the Carnegies with nothing left (wall65).

With nothing else to-do, they sold all they owned. They put the money toward boat tickets going to America. On May 17, 1848 the Carnegies left Scotland with their sights on a new beginning (wall71). They were headed for New York City and from there they would leave for Allegheny city.

It was a fifteen-day trip from Scotland to America on a cargo ship called the Wiscasset (wall71). On the boat ride, the boat and how it operated fascinated Andrew. He wanted to know everything about it. He spent his time as a volunteer deck hand; he was taught how to do simple thing on the boat to help it run.The boat operators told him what to do and they greatly appreciated the extra hand (Wall73). Upon their arrival in New York City, one of the deck hands offered to take Andrew for a sarsaparilla, As Andrew recalled from his autobiography.

It was in the parlor, where a brass spout that poured out the sarsaparilla caught Andrew’s eye (Carnegie 27). When he saw this he did not connect it to steel or metal, he just took gazed upon the beauty of it. This love for metal materials continued on to his tycoon years of steel. From New York City, they took a three-week ferry trip down the Erie Canal to Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania.It was in Pittsburgh that they met Margret’s sister who had an apartment for them to live in for free, as author John Winkler claimed in his book Incredible Carnegie.

In Pittsburgh, Andrews’s intelligence grew with everything he came into contact with. In the book Lockout Story of the Homestead Strike in 1892 written by Leon Wolff, it talks about mainly about the homestead strikes, but has a chapter dedicated to how Andrew got his start in America. Wolff claimed that the family was struggling to make ends meet so Andrew went out and got his first job as a bobbin boy at Blackstock Cotton Mill, where he made $1. 0 per week, which he gave to his mom to help the family. He thought he was on top of the world for being on a payroll before he was 13 years old. He was on his way to millions at a young age.

The only thing that would make Andrew happier would be the thrill of earning more and more money. That is what happened when his boss John H. Hay made him a bill clerk for $2 per week (wolff50). Andrews’s fascination with money continued to increase. Hay kept all his financial records in single entry form. Someone told Andrew that all the important and big firms use double entry journals.

Andrew let his determination to be a part of the best take over him. He took lessons in the evenings after work learning how to do double entry bookkeeping by a man named Williams, an experienced bookkeeper (Wolff 50). His newfound subject matter will later help him run his own company in the future, and let him understand where he is receiving and spending money at. Andrew did not know a lot of people in Pittsburgh yet, which made networking hard for him.

One day, Andrew’s Uncle Hogan came to him one day with a job opportunity that was to pay $2. 50 per week (Carnegie 37).This was a large sum of money and grabbed Andrew’s attention immediately. The job was a messenger boy for the Ohio Telegraph Company. During the interview Andrew confessed that he did not know Pittsburgh very well and was unsure of how he would do He set off to work right after the interview was over and was employed by the telegraph company (Carnegie 37).

Andrew, being himself, wanted to be the best messenger he could. During his free time he would walk the streets of the city learning where every building was located and the contact person for each.Before he would go to sleep at night he would go over a map of the buildings until he knew exactly where each one was located (Carnegie 38). His will to be the best never disappointed him or anyone else. Andrews’s determination never stopped, he put every effort into his work and never left anything in his gas tank at the end of the workday. You could find him running the streets of Pittsburgh delivering messages until eleven at night.

Carnegie was a valuable team member for the Ohio telegraph company. He got a raise from $11. 25 per month to $13. 0 per month, for doing the same job as other messenger boys but much better (Winkler 49).

Thomas Scott was in charge of the Pittsburgh division of the Pennsylvania railroads and he wanted Andrew to work for him. He came into the office where Andrew worked and asked Andrew if he would work for him. His boss at the Ohio telegraph said no to the new job offer and that Andrew would stay at his current job. This shows how hard of a worker young Carnegie was.

Andrew was interested in the new job and accepted the job offer after he found out it paid $35 per month to be Mr. Scott’s clerk and telegraph operator. Carnegie 61) It was the job of an older man at the time but Andrew, at the age of 16, took the job and did exceptionally well. The move to the Pennsylvania railroad system was one that Andrew would never forget because of how it was the reason he became Andrew Carnegie, steel tycoon. In 1861 Andrew held an important job, he was called to serve the north as Mr. Scotts assistant, from President Lincoln.

While working for the Pennsylvania Railroad system he was called to duty in the Civil War to help run the trains of the North. Carnegie went to Washington D. C. to be Mr.Scott’s assistant to run the military’s railroads (Carnegie 95). This was a big step for Andrew; he met with President Lincoln daily to give him telegram messages that came across the lines (Carnegie 97).

After the war he became interested in the process of iron forging, and saw an opportunity to get involved in the booming demand for it. He purchased metal from the Keystone Bridge Company and formed his own company called Pittsburgh Locomotive Works to sell his own iron (Wolff 52). This was Carnegie’s first taste of the metal industry. In 1878 Carnegie expanded his company by purchasing 58% of Edgar Company.Edgar was one of the top metal producing plants during the time of Andrews’s ownership (Wolff 53), but that was not enough for him “he pushed on and up vein as a peacock” stated author Wolff. He meant by this that owning this company was not enough for Andrew, he wanted more.

Andrew made a key move during the Iron Age that set him apart from all others. He bought the Mesabi Range on the shores of Lake Superior through a leasing deal with John D. Rockefeller, which eventually resulted in outright ownership for Andrew (Wolff 53). Everyone in the iron business said that this gave Andrew a position unequalled by any producer in the world.This was stated because of the multiple ways he could ship iron, using Lake Superior and all the rivers that spouted out of it.

Andrew’s next move was the move that set him up for life, it was steel. Andrew always wanted to make more money and therefore was always open to new ideas. Steel was the new booming industry in France. Andrew took a boat over to London to meet a crazy French man, Bessemer. Bessemer claimed that he could turn iron into a product called steel (Wolff 55). Bessemer demonstrated the process in front of Andrew, and Andrew was in awe when he saw the fiery conversion happen right before his eyes.

Andrew left London in a flash to go back to the states saying that “The day of Iron has passed- steel is king” (Wolff 55). As soon as his feet hit United State’s soil the process of steel was under way almost immediately. Shortly after his return, Andrew was a king of the time. He was the first one to start the steel industry in the United States and it was based in his mills he owned in Pittsburgh, PA. He was moving at a rapid pace, he was buying every piece of land that he could to expand his company. In 1881 there was unrest at a rival steel mill causing all employees to go on a long and tedious strike.

In 1883 Andrew saw a key opportunity and did not pass it up, he bought the Homestead Mill (Wolff 57). In 1890 he bought his last steel plant located in Duquesne (Wolff 58). After this purchase in 1890 Andrew was responsible for over one fourth of the national output for steel (Wolff 60). Carnegie was at the top of his game. People tend to only relate Carnegie to steel, however it was the years before he became a steel tycoon that shaped his character into the Andrew Carnegie that Pittsburgh came to know and love. If it was not for his childhood he may not have been as successful as he was.

By the end of Andrew’s steel run he had formed a very successful industry. In a book published by his headquarters it broke down everything that part of Andrew’s empire. When everything was all said and done, He had one general office, 15 domestic sale offices, 4 foreign sale office’s, he owned 33 mills that produced 41 products, held together by thousands and thousands of his employees (General 3). Andrew can teach us all a lesson, that lesson is the value of hard work. He showed and proved what one human being can accomplish by putting all their efforts into something that they love. He also showed that change is good.

f he did not change jobs as a child or as a teen he would have never been known as Andrew Carnegie steel tycoon. Works Cited Carnegie, Andrew. Autobiography of Andrew Carnegie. Cambridge, Massachusetts: Riverside, 1920. Print.

General Offices of the Carnegie Building. Carnegie Steel Company Manufactures of Bessemer and Open-Hearth Steel. Pittsburgh, PA, 1903. Print. Wall, Joseph F.

Andrew Carnegie. United States: Oxford UP, 1970. Print. Winkler, John K.

Incredible Carnegie. New York, NY: Vanguard, 1931. Print. Wolff, Leon.

Lockout Story of the Homestead Strike in 1892. New York, NY: Harper and Row, 1965. Print