Carnegie's Contribution to Industrial Business
Carnegie’s Contribution to Industrial Business It seems that, rapidly, business changed in the Nineteenth Century. Business transformed from a small-scale setting to a larger, more efficient standard. Workers went from being masters at their profession to unskilled workers making more products with the help of machinery. Not only had the physical aspect of business changed, but the organizational skills of being a manager were modified as well. There are many examples of businessmen that contributed to this change, but one of the most influential is Andrew Carnegie. Andrew Carnegie observed the structure of business and made modifications to meet his own needs in order to produce a successful and prosperous business. Carnegie took advantage of the changes in American and European industry by creating a new way in which people look at business today. As illustrated in the book Andrew Carnegie and the Rise of Big Business, Carnegie built an industrial colossus by focusing on cost instead of profit, creating a new system for his laborers, and lowering prices to out-sell his competitors. One way Andrew Carnegie managed his steel business was by focusing on costs. While his competitors focused on how much money they were going to make in the end, Carnegie paid attention to lowering costs as much as possible. For example, one philosophy he worked by was, “‘Watch the costs and the profits will take care of themselves’” (Livesay 111). He felt that if he lowered the cost of manufacturing steel, the profits will follow. This is a very risky way of thinking for most people. A lot of the time profits do not always follow, but they did in Carnegie’s case. One way of guaranteeing that profits would always follow was to keep customers buying his products. Carnegie knew how to keep customers coming, because even “when supposedly no customers existed…he made them yield a profit” (Livesay 120). Andrew Carnegie continued to make a profit during difficult economic times, because
Cited: Livesay, Harold C. Andrew Carnegie and the Rise of Big Business (Library of American Biography Series) (3rd Edition) (Library of American Biography). New York: Longman, 2006. Print.