Andrew Carnegie

             Carnegie was involved in reorganizing the whole pattern of industrial activity. Early in his career he changed jobs, moving from textiles to the telegraph office and then to the railroads (Livesay 1). Those shifts were symbolic as the brought him into contact with the dynamic forces that were altering communications and were creating large regional ones (McCloskey 140). Much of what he learned about communications and transportation he later adapted to the steel industry.
             Andrew Carnegie was born on November 25, 1835 in the attic of a small one-story house in Dunfermline, Scotland. His father was a damask weaver, linen woven so there is a pattern produced by the different directions of the thread, without contrast of color. With the invention of the power loom the Carnegie family was faced with poverty and decided to take a voyage to America for a new start. "The looms were sold, an extra twenty pounds was borrowed to finance the steerage passage, and the classic Alger-like saga of immigrant boy to industrial monarch was begun (McCloskey 140)."
             Upon arriving in America the Carnegie family went to Allegheny, Pennsylvania in which a relative gave them a single room to live rent free. The thought of education was nonexistent for Andrew since he had to work in order for his family to survive. He started out as a bobbin boy at the Blockstock Cotton Mill, working from six in the morning to six at night for a measly salary of one sixty-five a week (Husband 93). He was soon promoted to engineer's assistant in which "for twelve long hours each day he shoveled coal under the boilers and ran the engine. His pay was now one dollar and eighty cents a week( Parker 93)."
             Carnegie left his work in the cellar of the factory to be a district messenger boy for the telegraph company for three dollars a week (Husband 94). Carnegie once said, "My entrance into the the telegraph office was a transitio...

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Andrew Carnegie. (1969, December 31). In MegaEssays.com. Retrieved 09:14, March 28, 2024, from https://www.megaessays.com/viewpaper/77791.html