From a Wall Street Journal
story on U.S. Steel's CEO, and his plan to overhaul the steelmaking giant:
U.S. Steel's share price has more than doubled since Mr. Longhi took
over, largely because investors are excited about his cost-cutting
initiative, dubbed "the Carnegie Way," after notable steelmaker
Andrew Carnegie.
The company is cutting $435 million in costs this year and said
it can make similar cuts in the next several years.
Notable steelmaker? You could
say that:
Carnegie made his fortune in the steel industry,
controlling the most extensive integrated iron and steel operations
ever owned by an individual in the United States. One of his two great
innovations was in the cheap and efficient mass production of steel by
adopting and adapting the Bessemer process for steel making. Sir Henry Bessemer had invented the furnace which allowed the high carbon content of pig iron
to be burnt away in a controlled and rapid way. The steel price dropped
as a direct result, and Bessemer steel was rapidly adopted for railway
lines and girders for buildings and bridges. The second was in his vertical integration of all suppliers of raw materials. In the late 1880s, Carnegie Steel was the largest manufacturer of pig iron, steel rails, and coke in the world, with a capacity to produce approximately 2,000 tons of pig metal per day. In 1888, Carnegie bought the rival Homestead Steel Works, which included an extensive plant served by tributary coal and iron fields, a 425-mile (685 km) long railway, and a line of lake steamships. Carnegie combined his assets and those of his associates in 1892 with the launching of the Carnegie Steel Company.
By 1889, the U.S. output of steel exceeded that of the UK, and
Carnegie owned a large part of it. Carnegie's empire grew to include the
J. Edgar Thomson Steel Works, (named for John Edgar Thomson,
Carnegie's former boss and president of the Pennsylvania Railroad),
Pittsburgh Bessemer Steel Works, the Lucy Furnaces, the Union Iron
Mills, the Union Mill (Wilson, Walker & County), the Keystone Bridge
Works, the Hartman Steel Works, the Frick Coke Company, and the Scotia
ore mines. Carnegie, through Keystone, supplied the steel for and owned
shares in the landmark Eads Bridge project across the Mississippi River at St. Louis, Missouri
(completed 1874). This project was an important proof-of-concept for
steel technology, which marked the opening of a new steel market.
In 1901, Carnegie was 66 years of age and considering retirement. He
reformed his enterprises into conventional joint stock corporations as
preparation to this end. John Pierpont Morgan
was a banker and perhaps America's most important financial deal maker.
He had observed how efficiently Carnegie produced profit. He envisioned
an integrated steel industry that would cut costs, lower prices to
consumers, produce in greater quantities and raise wages to workers. To
this end, he needed to buy out Carnegie and several other major
producers and integrate them into one company, thereby eliminating
duplication and waste. He concluded negotiations on March 2, 1901, and
formed the United States Steel Corporation. It was the first corporation in the world with a market capitalization over $1 billion.
Maybe the Wall Street Journal wasn't impressed that Carnegie gave so much of his wealth away. Anyway, it is notable that the man who created the U.S. Steel empire is described as "notable" in a story on the same company over a hundred years after Carnegie sold it.
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