The archetypal hero of the age was Andrew Carnegie. He wrote a striking autobiography and an important article, 'The Gospel of Wealth.' He understood what America was about - none better. It was about the freedom to get rich, and then the duty to give that wealth away. His life was a perfect parabola overarching both objectives.
'Capitalism is about turning luxuries into necessities.' When Carnegie started, steel trim was a luxury. When he retired it was standard.
It was Carnegie who first put the laboratory technicians to work, thus marrying chemistry to steel production. It would not be true to say that he created industrial technology in America, for that had already been done by men like Fulton. But he was the first to make it an essential part of big business.
By raising productivity you could slash prices. Carnegie argued that steel was at the heart of a modern industrial economy and that, if you could get steel costs down, you ultimately reduced the price of virtually everything and so raised living standards. The 4,000 men at Carnegie's Homestead works at Pittsburgh made three times as much steel in any year as the 15,000 men at the Great Krupps works at Essen, supposedly the most modern in Europe. This higher productivity enabled Carnegie to get the price of steel rails, which cost $160 a ton in 1875, down to $17 a ton in 1898. These enormous savings worked their way through into every aspect of the economy, with consequential benefit to the public. No president, by miracles of administration, no Congress, by enlightened legislation, was capable of bringing comparable material benefits to all Americans in this way.
Carnegie was single-minded and concentrated in his vision. He believed in business simplicity. He never bought on credit and ended up the richest man in the world.
