CARNEGIE AND THE ERA OF STEEL
Andrew Carnegie was largely re- sponsible for the great advances in steel production . Carnegie, who came to America from Scotland as a child of 12, progressed from bob- bin boy in a cotton factory to a job
in a telegraph office, then to one on the Pennsylvania Railroad . Before he was 30 years old he had made shrewd and farsighted investments, which by 1865 were concentrated in iron . Within a few years, he had or- ganized or had stock in companies making iron bridges, rails, and lo- comotives . Ten years later, he built the nation’s largest steel mill on the Monongahela River in Pennsylvania . He acquired control not only of new mills, but also of coke and coal prop- erties, iron ore from Lake Superior, a fleet of steamers on the Great Lakes, a port town on Lake Erie, and a con- necting railroad . His business, allied with a dozen others, commanded favorable terms from railroads and shipping lines . Nothing comparable in industrial growth had ever been seen in America before .
Though Carnegie long dominat- ed the industry, he never achieved a complete monopoly over the nat- ural resources, transportation, and industrial plants involved in the making of steel . In the 1890s, new companies challenged his preemi- nence . He would be persuaded to merge his holdings into a new cor- poration that would embrace most of the important iron and steel proper- ties in the nation .