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Andrew Carnegie: Evaluating a Capitalist Icon

© Michael J. Swogger

Many of us elevate historical figures to heroes. Often we look at an individual and assess their contribution to a country, an organization, a cause, a people. And when we decide who our heroes are, the tendency is then to minimize or even erase their humanness, raising them up to be some sort of demigods. This proclivity to virtually deify historical figures seems natural but is very dangerous - such elevation also tends to forgive or even justify the sins of such individuals, regardless of how terrible those sins may have been. There are prime examples of this heroizing phenomenon within the context of American labor history. There is no better illustration of this than with America's capitalist giant, Andrew Carnegie.

There is little room to dispute that Andrew Carnegie helped bring a phenomenal narrative to the story of America. Born poor in Scotland in 1835, he and his parents immigrated to the United States when he was thirteen years of age and settled in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. Andrew and his father William took a job in a cotton factory, Andrew making $1.20/week, working twelve-hour days as a bobbin boy. And during these working years he spent hours educating himself by reading in a local library and attending Shakespearean plays. Then young Andrew took a job in the city's telegraph office. It was there he met a man by the name Thomas A. Scott, superintendent of the Pennsylvania railroad, and Scott hired Andrew as his personal telegrapher at $35.00 a month. It was there Carnegie worked his way up the ladder, eventually succeeding Scott as superintendent of the railroad's Pittsburgh office. He remained at this position through the Civil War, running the railroad and assisting Scott in supervising military transportation throughout the war.¹

By the end of the war, Carnegie was becoming more interested in the booming iron industry. He boldly left the Pennsylvania Railroad to work for the Keystone Bridge Company to replace wooden bridges with iron ones, making an annual income of $50,000 by his third year. Much of his income came not from salary but from investments and savings. And he soon came to the conclusion that working for others was not in his favor, that the best way to make money was to go into business for himself. And that is what he did.²

His decision to enter the steel industry would make him the richest man in America. As Paul Johnson states, "[Steel] fitted his maxim: 'Capitalism is about turning luxuries into necessities.' When Carnegie started, steel trim was a luxury. When he retired it was standard." Carnegie invested a large sum of his own money and borrowed more to cash in on his own refining of the Bessemer Process, the process by which steel is converted from iron, and he built a plant outside of Pittsburgh. He transformed the steel industry into a big business phenomenon and was soon the man behind America's worldwide lead in the production of steel.³

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