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U.S. History 1877-Present 3: Andew Carnegie 7878 Views
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Description:
Steel yourself. That big rich guy who paid for Carnegie Hall, Carnegie Mellon University, and hundreds of libraries all around the country...used own a steel mill. Eh? Eh? Oh and before that he was so poor he couldn't even afford books. Maybe we should have mentioned that first.
Transcript
- 00:03
Superman he can leap tall buildings in a single bound [Superman jumps over skyscrapers]
- 00:07
run faster than a speeding bullet and is more powerful than a locomotive but [Superman pushing locomotive train]
- 00:11
Superman is no match for the original man of scale Andrew Carnegie Andrew
- 00:16
Carnegie started as a dirt-poor Scottish immigrant who came to America at age 13
- 00:21
in 1848 dirt-poor de nuit justice dirt was too good for young Carnegie when he [Ship sails from Scotland to US]
Full Transcript
- 00:27
first arrived in Pennsylvania he went to work in a cotton mill like any other
- 00:30
poor kid would do but andc did not end his days making $1 a week like most
- 00:36
other factory workers a dollar a week since back then hitting up the mcdonald [Man wearing crown]
- 00:40
dollar menus would have been decadent well he moved up the ladder to be a
- 00:44
messenger boy for a telegraph company sweet and then he became a telegraph
- 00:48
operator for a railroad even sweeter and then he worked his way up to be a
- 00:53
manager sweeter still and when the Civil War began
- 00:56
Carnegie ended up being the guy in charge of the huge and complicated [Carnegie surrounded by books and papers]
- 01:00
logistics process of transporting Union soldiers across the country sickeningly
- 01:06
sweet all right well in 1864 Carnegie took some cash and invested it in a
- 01:11
steel mill and then things got real after the war he focused his mad skills [Carnegie watering plants]
- 01:15
on creating the biggest steel company in the world
- 01:18
the Carnegie steel company instead of focusing on just one part of the steel
- 01:22
making process chronica dominated the entire process by owning it meaning he
- 01:28
bought the mines that produce the iron ore he bought the railroads that took [Carnegie with property of Andrew sign at rail roads]
- 01:32
the iron to the steel mills and then took the steel beams out to play yeah
- 01:36
kind of fun if it looked like steel acted like steel or smelled like steel
- 01:40
well then Carnegie owned it he also adopted and fine-tuned the Bessemer
- 01:45
process that's when process was a way of making steel that was stronger than the
- 01:49
norm that would have given Carnegie an edge all by itself but the Bessemer
- 01:53
process was also cheaper than the old way of doing things and with that [Men stood in line for unemployment]
- 01:56
Carnegie made his competitors weeps and sent them tissues but tissues were made
- 02:01
of steel so they kind of hurt blew into us well Carnegie made some
- 02:04
serious money after the war obviously the u.s. was all about building then
- 02:08
skyscrapers bridges libraries schools railroads and everything was filled with [Buildings appear in skyline]
- 02:13
feel Carnegie had the cheapest strongest steel it was the most available and so
- 02:19
well he became the go-to guy whenever anybody wanted to build and pretty much
- 02:22
anything well the 1901 Carnegie was ready to
- 02:25
retire so he sold Carnegie steel to banker JP Morgan who turned it into an [Carnegie hands paper to JP Morgan]
- 02:30
even more gargantuan corporation called yes US Steel well it was the first
- 02:35
corporation to be valued at over a billion dollars Carnegie was out of the
- 02:40
steel business with only the half billion dollars Morgan paid him to keep
- 02:43
warm of course with a half a billion dollars Carnegie could have literally [Carnegie sat beside fire]
- 02:46
thrown the money into fireplaces and will kiss warm for a while but he didn't
- 02:51
do that at least 350 million dollars of that fortune went to charity [Carnegie with giant check hands it to homeless man]
- 02:55
well Carnegie was kind of like Scrooge at the end of Christmas Carol he'd
- 02:59
relied on the kindness of strangers who lent him books and he was a poor factory
- 03:04
kid so in his rich old age he funded the construction and stocking of 3,000
- 03:09
libraries across the country he also famously funded Carnegie Hall the
- 03:14
concert hall in New York City and he funded the creation of Carnegie Mellon [Carnegie statue appears]
- 03:17
University that's why it was named after him well you know and a melon
- 03:22
that's melon with 2 L's well that's another rich guy's last name anyway in a latter
- 03:26
years Carnegie did not start talking to fruit.... [Carnegie appears behind statue with fruit]
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