Captains of Industry
It was the Roman emperor and philosopher Marcus Aurelius who said, "A man's worth is no greater than the worth of his ambitions." The truth of this statement is expands far past the ruins of an Ancient Rome and into the coffers of those great businessmen of America who changed the face of commerce in this country during the latter years of the nineteenth century and on into the twentieth century. Men such as Cornelius Vanderbilt, Andrew Carnegie, and the colossal John D. Rockefeller represent the age where a young nation stretched its legs into the long fitting pants of capitalism. Many saw these giant men of commerce as robber barons, manipulators of huge monopolies that preyed on the public. Still many view them as pioneers of American business or "Captains of Industry". At the time, the practices that these men used to exercise their industrial muscles were many times over bearing and illegal by the standards and laws of the present, but the empires that were built by these! trailblazers shaped the landscape of commerce forever. These men were obviously captains of industry, building immortal fortunes and names. To completely understand the impact of their works, individual attention must be paid to those ambitious men who pe
The next important figure of commerce at this time is none other than Andrew Carnegie. Almost like a fairy tale, Andrew Carnegie went from being a bobbin boy, which was the first job he had after moving to America in 1848 from Scotland, and earning a dollar and twenty cents a week to creating the first billion dollar corporation in the United States. Carnegie's tale is a tale of steel, and the ladder of success he climbed was made out of U.S. Steel. So was much of everything else at the time. He entered steel production in Pittsburgh and from there he built his empire out of top quality workers and managing top quality production. He was a stern businessman who detracted from the monopolistic habits of his time in favor of more ethical methods. By the turn of the century, Andrew Carnegie's U.S. Steel was producing a quarter of the nations steel, dividing profits of forty million dollars a year with his fellow investors. By 1900, Carnegie was at the height of his business and ! was the possessor of two percent of the gross domestic product. Finally, if Vanderbilt and Carnegie were "Captains of Industry", then this next man was the Admiral of the Fleet. His name was John D. Rockefeller, a name which also means American money, power, and most importantly, oil. Born to a poor family, Rockefeller became a successful businessman at the age of nineteen. After many business ventures and further investments, Rockefeller organized the Standard Oil C
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Approximate Word count = 980
Approximate Pages = 4 (250 words per page double spaced)
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