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Carnegie was born in Dunfermline, Scotland into a weaver's family. In 1848 his father, who had been a Chartist, immigrated to America, settling in Allegheny, Pennsylvania. Young Carnegie started work at an early age as a bobbin boy in a cotton factory, and a few years later was engaged as a telegraph clerk and operator with the Atlantic and Ohio Company . He was noted as one of the first operators to read telegraphic signals by sound. His ability as a worker was noted by T.A. Scott of the Pennsylvania railway, who employed him as a secretary; and in 1859, when Scott became vice-president of the company, he made Carnegie superintendent of the western division of the line. In this post Carnegie was responsible for several improvements in the service; and when the American Civil WarThe American Civil War was fought in the United States from 1861 until 1865 between the northern states, popularly referred to as "the U. the Union," " the North," or "the Yankees"; and the seceding southern states, commonly referred to as "the Confederat opened he accompanied Scott, then Assistant United States Secretary of War , to the front.
While in this position he met also George PullmanPhotographs pertaining to George Pullman George Pullman ( March 3, 1831 October 19, 1897) was an American inventor and industrialist. Although Pullman dropped out of school at age 14, he eventually became one of Chicago's most influential and controversia, inventor of the sleeping carThe sleeping car is a railroad car on a train with sleeping facilities. The more luxurious types have real beds and compartments not shared with strangers, while the couchette car with berths is more basic, with compartments for four or six people, where. Mr. Carnegie immediately recognized the great merit of the invention and readily joined in the effort for its adoption. The first sources of the enormous wealth he subsequently attained were his introduction of sleeping carThe sleeping car is a railroad car on a train with sleeping facilities. The more luxurious types have real beds and compartments not shared with strangers, while the couchette car with berths is more basic, with compartments for four or six people, wheres for railways, and his purchase in 1864 of Storey Farm on Oil Creek , which cost $40,000, and yielded in one year over $1,000,000 in cash dividends, and where the oil wellAn oil well is a layman's term for any perforation through the Earth's surface designed to find and release both petroleum oil and gas hydrocarbons. The well is created by drilling a hole (5 to 30 inches) into the earth with a drilling rig turning a drills secured a large profit. Mr. Carnegie was subsequently associated with others in establishing a rolling mill .
But all this was only a preliminary to the success attending his development of the ironThis article is about metallic iron. For the ironing device, see ironing manganese iron cobalt Fe Ru Full table General Name, Symbol, Number iron, Fe, 26 Chemical series transition metal Group, Period, Block 8 (VIIIB), 4 , d Density, Hardness 7874 kg/m3, and steelSteel is a metal alloy whose major component is iron, with carbon being the primary alloying material. Carbon acts as a binding agent, locking the otherwise easily-moved iron atoms into a rigid lattice. Varying the amount of carbon and its distribution in industries at Pittsburg, Pennsylvania. Carnegie made his fortune in the steel industry, controlling the most extensive and complete system of iron and steel industries ever managed by an individual. His great innovation was in the cheap and efficient mass production of steel rails for railroad lines.
In 1868, at age 33, he wrote in a letter to himself that he was "overwhelmed by business cares" and that he "will resign business at thirty-five", but "during the ensuing two years I wish to spend the afternoons in receiving instruction and in reading systematically."
Two years after he wrote that letter Carnegie would embrace a new steel refining process being used by Englishman Henry Bessemer to convert huge batches of iron into steel, which was much more flexible than brittle iron. Carnegie was "ruthless" in keeping the costs down and managed by the motto "watch costs and the profits take care of themselves."
Carnegie's empire would later embraced the Edgar Thomson Steel Works , the Pittsburgh Bessemer Steel Works , the Lucy Furnaces , the Union Iron Mills , the Union Mill ( Wilson, Walker & County ), the Keystone Bridge Works , the Hartman Steel Works , the Frick Coke Company and the Scotia ore mines . In the late 1880s Carnegie Steel was the largest manufacturer of pig-iron, steel-rails and coke in the world, with a capacity to produce approximately 2,000 tons of pig-metal a day. In 1888 he bought the rival Homestead Steel Works , which included an extensive plant served by tributary coal and iron fields, a railway 425 miles long, and a line of lake steamships.
As years went by, the various Carnegie companies represented in this industry prospered to such an extent that in 1901, he sold his steel holdings to a group of New York-based financiers led by J.P. Morgan for $250 million. The buyout, which was negotiated in secret by Charles M. Schwab (no relation to Charles R. Schwab , the brokerage house founder), was the largest such industrial takeover in the United States at the time. The holdings were incorporated in the United States Steel Corporation, a trust organized by J. Pierpont Morgan, and Carnegie himself retired from business, he was bought out at a figure equivalent to a capital of approximately $480 million.
Besides steel, Carnegie's companies were involved in other areas of the railroad industry. His company Pittsburgh Locomotive and Car Works was noted for its building of large locomotives at the turn of the 20th century. His associates and partners included Henry Clay Frick and F. T. F. Lovejoy.
And beside that, he long owned eighteen English newspapers, which he controlled in the interests of radicalism.
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