The Gilded Age occurred right before the Progressive Era, America’s renaissance. There were major advancements made from safety and sanitation to transportation and hospitality. Eyes were opened, streets were cleaned, and pockets were filled. City life was so vulnerable to intelligent minds taking over. Although the quality of life sounded very inhospitable back then, there were still people who took advantage of all the room for improvement. Four people to be exact. Four people whose legacies are everlasting because they changed the game of money forever.
Andrew Carnegie, a Scottish entrepreneur, began his career working in various railroad jobs. In 1889, at the age of 54 years old, he started his own business, Carnegie Steel Corporation. He then sold it twelve years later and used the rest of his life to give back to the city. His intelligent business strategies fueled the economy and created efficient means of transportation for the country. The black mark in his legacy is the 1892 Homestead incident. His company tried to lower wages which caused a violent rebellion from the workers against their supervisors. He was blamed or the aggressive actions of his managers. This one wrinkle is not enough to deter the attention from Carnegie’s good deeds. All his donations and his accomplishment of developing steel dub him a Captain of Industry.
John D. Rockefeller, entrepreneur, born in New York owned the largest oil company during its time. He started in 1870 in Cleveland with his Standard Oil Company. Only twelve years later did he have a complete monopoly of oil in the country. Like Carnegie, he was very successful because he had ownership of just about everything involved in his company. All the resources were his. At the age of 56, he retired from working in Standard Oil in order to live a more philanthropic lifestyle. His industry was attacked heavily by the people of the nation. His substantial donations did more than enough to outweigh this Captain of...