Andrew Carnegie

Andrew Carnegie is known as the king of steel. He was born in Scotland in 1835. In 1848 his family left for America and ended up in Pittsburg, where they lived in a small house and had very little money. Growing up Carnegie had to work at many various jobs, where he received a low salary in order to help support his family. As he got older his jobs improved, and by the age of 25 he had made a good amount of money by investing a large portion of his money and owning a portion of the Pennsylvania Railroad. In 1872 he traveled to England where he met Henry Bessemer, the man who converted iron into steel. He took Bessemer's brilliant steel-making process back to America and built several steel mills in Pennsylvania. At the age of 65 he finally decided it was time to move on from the mills and he sold the Carnegie Steel Company to J.P. Morgan for $480,000,000. A hero is someone who has good values in life, is a role model, and is inspirational to others. Andrew Carnegie was a hero because he developed successful business practices, gave money to many organizations, and had good employee relations.

Andrew Carnegie used his numerous good ideas and strategies to become a successful businessman. His most successful business stategy was his method of vertical integration, which is when one person controls all the steps in the production process. Instead of just owning the steel mills, he also owned the iron ore fields, where the iron used to make the steel came from, along with the boats and railroads used to transport the iron to his steel mills (document 5). Even though this technique awarded him with a vast amount of money he also used this process to give many unemployed people jobs that awarded them with money as well. Carnegie's process of vertical integration was a business technique that improved future businesses. Part of why he was such a successful businessman was because he was always well informed of his finances and how his business was doing. "Carnegie's watch on costs never let up in his first twenty-five years in the steel business." (document 3). He also was informed of other businesses finances in order to ensure that he had lower prices and more customers then his competition. Over the years he decreased his selling prices because production costs lowered and competition increased. Even though he was always decreasing his selling price he made sure that his total selling price was always higher than his production cost, in order to increase his companies earnings (document 4). In addition to being a good businessman and managing his companies money, he was just as good at managing his own money as well.

Carnegie donated at least $350,695,653 to various organizations that were important to him.