Andrew Carnegie

Andrew Carnegie was born in Scotland, his father was a poor hand weaver. the family move to the United States in 1848. When he turned twelve, Andrew Carnegie worked as a bobbin boy at a textile factory. The salary was $1.20 per week. When he was fourteen he got a messenger job in a telegraph office, before becoming the secretary of a superintendent and future president of the Pennsylvania Railroad by the name of Thomas Scott. Scott was impressed with Carnegie, and made him the Superintendent when he moved up to President. Carnegie noticed that investing in companies who served the railroads, he could make a lot of money. He bought Iron shares as well as shares in companies that made rail cars and engines, and a company that made railroad bridges. When he was thirty, he made $50 thousand a year, a big jump from $1.20 a week, before quitting his job to do his own business. He traveled to Europe, where he met Sir Henry Bessemer, who had pioneered a way to make steel faster and cheaper to produce.

Carnegie returned to Pittsburgh and opened his own steel company, and bragged about how cheaply he could produce steel. He made the company more efficient by buying coal mines, limestone quarries and iron fields to save money by not having to pay other companies for the raw materials, enabling many businesses and industries to become bigger.