Gilded Age partner test review p1

When did Andrew Carnegie come to America?

Andrew Carnegie came to this country in 1848, at age 12. Six years later, he worked his way up to become private secretary to the local superintendent of the Pennsylvania Railroad.

How did Carnegie start his journey

One morning, Carnegie single-handedly relayed messages that unsnarled a tangle of freight and passenger trains. His boss, Thomas A. Scott, rewarded Carnegie by giving him a chance to buy stock. Carnegie’s mother mortgaged the family home to make the purchase possible. Soon Carnegie received his first dividend.

What was Carnegie’s importance

Andrew Carnegie was one of the first industrial moguls to make his own fortune. His rise from rags to riches, along with his passion for supporting charities, made him a model of the American success story.

How did Carnegie get rich and what did he do after that?

By 1865, Carnegie was so busy managing the money he had earned in dividends that he happily left his job at the Pennsylvania Railroad. He entered the steel business in 1873 after touring a British steel mill and witnessing the awesome spectacle of the Bessemer process in action.

Vertical integration

a process in which carnegie bought out his suppliers— coal fields and iron mines, ore freighters, and railroad lines—in order to control the raw materials and transportation systems.

horisontal integration

Carnegie also attempted to buy out competing steel producers. In this process, known as horizontal integration, companies producing similar products merge.

Social Darwinism

The philosophy called Social Darwinism grew out of the English naturalist Charles Darwin’s theory of biological evolution. In his book On the Origin of Species, published in 1859

What did Darwin write in his book Origin of Species

Darwin described his observations that some individuals of a species flourish and pass their traits along to the next generation, while others do not. He explained that a process of “natural selection” weeded out less-suited individuals and enabled the best-adapted to survive.