Bio on Rockefeller, Carnegie, Morgan PDF

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Nicholas Nerys Premisler Rockefeller -John D. Rockefeller made his Standard Oil into an empire that would be scrutinized for their intensive buying out of smaller oil companies. This practice led to Rockefeller’s company controlling more than 90% of the American oil market. His company was later ruled a monopoly by the Supreme Court. Through purchasing most of Cleveland’s refineries, among others in New York and Philadelphia, he was able to use his own tank cars, his own barrels, his own laborers, and his own railroads to transport his shipments. He nearly owned everything by 1878, and some of his practices led to utter violence in the streets through strikes and threats. By the early 1880s, Rockefeller had created America’s first trust company because of the monopoly he controlled. Through the trust, the company looked as if it had independent trustees that oversaw the company’s overall organization in each state. With over forty businesses under its name, Rockefeller had formed a company worth more than $80 million dollars and became the richest company in the world. In the latter years of his business, he bought new oil fields and began processing crude oil in his own companies. Although his company always felt the heat of the government and the public, he began dabbling and eventually partially taking over the steel industry. However, after an agreement with Andrew Carnegie, the two decided not to touch each other’s industries. So, Rockefeller sold his shares in iron ore and Carnegie and J.P. Morgan created U.S. Steel, which surpassed $200 million dollars. From the beginning of his career, Rockefeller gave away one-tenth of his profits to worthy charities.

Carnegie -It was in Pittsburgh, at the age of 13, that Andrew Carnegie began his career as bobbin boy in a cotton factory for $1.20 per week. A voracious reader, he took advantage of the generosity of Col. James Anderson who opened his library to local working boys. Books provided most of his education as he worked his way through a series of jobs from messenger boy in the city's telegraph office to superintendent of the Western Division of the Pennsylvania Railroad. Andrew Carnegie ultimately made his fortune in steel, turning the industrial world on its ear in the process. He introduced the Bessemer steel making process to America and, in 1875, opened his largest steel plant, the Edgar Thompson Works, in Braddock, Pennsylvania. In 1899, Carnegie joined several of his business interests by forming the Carnegie Steel Company, which immediately became a leader in the steel industry. The empire he forged in the steel furnaces of Pittsburgh sold to J.P. Morgan in 1901 for $400 million and Andrew Carnegie retired from business life as the richest man in the world. The man of steel, however, had a heart of gold. By the time of his death in 1919, Andrew Carnegie had given away over $350 million to provide more than 2,500 free public libraries throughout the world.

J.P. Morgan -John Pierpont Morgan was a wealthy industrialist who emerged from the 19th century as one of the most powerful financiers of the 20th century -- he formed U.S. Steel, America's first billiondollar corporation, in 1901. He got his start in business in the late 1850s, with the New York branch of a banking firm run out of London by his father, Junius Morgan. With Anthony Drexel, John Pierpont Morgan formed Drexel, Morgan & Co. in New York in 1871 (it became J.P. Morgan & Co. in 1895). During the 1890s Morgan was the big money behind the expanding U.S. rail system -- what Andrew Carnegie was to steel and John D. Rockefeller was to oil. Morgan bought out Carnegie's steel companies, and formed U.S. Steel, a corporation comprised of nearly three dozen companies, with capitalization exceeding a billion dollars. In the early years of the 20th century, J.P. Morgan was emblematic of the era's "robber barons." He consolidated important parts of the U.S. economy and became crazy rich, thereby bringing on government anti-trust investigations. But even his run-ins with Washington "trust busters" like Teddy Roosevelt didn't hurt his relationship with the government, and it's been generally agreed that he saved the day during the Panic of 1907 and acted as an unofficial central bank for the U.S. economy. In his later years he was known as a great art collector and philanthropist....