Andrew Carnegie and the Rise of Big Business by William Olsen

Essay by tnvarnerUniversity, Bachelor'sA, August 2005

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Andrew Carnegie and the Rise of Big Business written by Harold C. Livesay, is a narrative account of Andrew Carnegie's life as a businessman that Chronicles the events on his life as a poor bobbin boy to become later the world's richest man and his ways of doing business. This account gives insight into how a boy went from rags to riches Andrew Carnegie was born in Dunfermline, Scotland. Because of a decline of weavers and the rise of textile factories, the Carnegie family moved to the United States. Andrew's father took a job at the Blackstock Cotton Mill, while young Andrew started as a bobbin boy at the same mill. A year later he took a job as a telegraph messenger boy; from there he got his next job at a railroad, and from here on his career started to rise. He developed a good sense for stocks and bought his first at the age of twenty.

He invested in railroads, oil, iron, and the railroad sleeping car which he invested and pushed for the rail lines.

Andrew Carnegie had a perfect sense for the new technological direction America was heading in. He capitalized on his knowledge by investing in the raw materials and inventions that would cause America to become the industrial leader of the world.

By 1900 American had indeed become the industrial leader of the world, and it was not by luck. The start of American industrialization began with the Pacific Railroad Act of 1862, which authorized the construction of the transcontinental railroad. The Union Pacific and Central Pacific Railroads were joined together to form the first transcontinental railroad in May of 1869 when railroad executives drove a golden spike into the ground at Promontory Point, Utah in order to connect the two railroads. It not...