Book Review: Andrew Carnegie and the Rise of Big Business By David C. Livesay Copyright 1975 Review by Steve Fritsch (March 2008)
As one of the greatest captains of industry in United States history and for the enduring legacy of his philanthropic deeds, Andrew Carnegie has been given a fair amount of attention from historians in a variety of biographies. Joseph Wall's 1970 acclaimed work, Andrew Carnegie, was the first major modern study of the business icon and was the sole, definitive biography until recently, when Peter Krass's Carnegie (2002) and David Nasa's Andrew Carnegie (2006) offered the public new scholarly works. In between these major biographies have been minor studies, including David Livesay's Andrew Carnegie and the Rise of Big Business (1975). For the general reader, Livesay's biography is a much less demanding read than the aforementioned, covering Carnegie's humble beginnings as a Scottish immigrant in Pittsburgh through his rise in the railroad industry and eventual success as a steel baron in a little over 200 pages. Although very little attention is given to the personal life of Carnegie -- the book is after all about the "Rise of Big Business" -- Livesay does a very respectable job in providing the reader with a balanced account of Carnegie's life in business, his interactions with the men whom he had to deal with, and his impact on the dramatic increase in production of American industry and the wealth that it would create.
To open the book, Livesay attempts to sum up the American character in one sentence, but in doing so also sums up Andrew Carnegie at the same time. "Nothing has characterized America more than the 'American dream,'" Livesay wrote, and perhaps no one has ever characterized the "American dream" better than Andrew Carnegie. His ambitious and energetic rise from a poor immigrant boy, aided by the "cohesiveness" of the Pittsburgh Scottish community -- which helped provide Carnegie a job in a telegraph office that was to be his launching pad towards bigger and better things -- has proved to succeeding generations that hard work, ingenuity, honesty and a little luck can take a person very far. And while Carnegie certainly possessed those traits, he also could be ruthless, uncompromising and overbearing. The combination of these qualities enabled him to become one of the richest men in the world, yet it was Carnegie's philanthropy, in the end, which has made him such a beloved and respected figure to so many people today. But as Livesay successfully illustrates throughout the book, Carnegie was an intensely complex, even paradoxical, man, and this makes him even that much more interesting to read about. As Library of American Biography editor Mark C. Carnes states in the book's preface, Carnegie was ''a man of perplexing contradictions: a penny-pinching zealot who drove workers and managers alike and yet constantly repudiated a life of ceaseless toils; an entrepreneur who connived to make more money and yet planned early on to give most of his wealth away; a political visionary who conceived of a benevolent workers' democracy and yet got caught up in some of the worst labor disputes in the nation's history.''
Livesay breaks down Carnegie's life into three basic parts: manager, capitalist, and entrepreneur. The author first explains Carnegie's meteoric rise through the Pennsylvania Railroad, the nation's largest corporation at the time, in which Carnegie mastered the new art of managing a complex, multi-unit industrial enterprise. After leaving the railroad industry at age 30, Carnegie turned his attention to capital investment, which would make him immensely rich, yet it also troubled his conscience. By age 37, he realized the difference between credible investment and shady stock speculating and determined he wanted to make something tangible. That something was manufacturing, and it would ultimately result in the creation of Carnegie Steel.
While building his steel company, however, which would soon become the largest industrial unit in the world, Carnegie also sought out to learn from the most respected intellectuals in the United States and from around the globe. He read voraciously, especially absorbing the ideas of Herbert Spencer, whose philosophy of social Darwinism "reinforced Carnegie's belief that by following his own star he helped move society as a whole toward its bright destiny.'' He also made a triumphant return to his birth town, Dunfermline, Scotland, and donated money to have a library built. These actions made Carnegie popular with common people and he hoped for an early retirement to do more of these things, as he had said he would in his autobiography.  But whether it was labor unrest, such as the infamous Homestead strike in 1892 -- one of the most serious labor disputes in U.S. history -- or problems with his business partners, especially Henry Clay Frick, Carnegie was forced to remain in control of the company's operations longer than he wanted. Things would eventually become so heated between Carnegie and Frick, who were polar opposites of one another, that even in old age, when both had retired and Carnegie offered an olive branch to Frick through a reconciliatory letter, Frick supposedly stated, "Tell Mr. Carnegie I'll meet him in Hell."
Such was the passion that people felt about Andrew Carnegie. Livesay, however, because it is such a short biography, does not go into much more detail about Carnegie's personal relationships, or what kind of personal impact he had on those around him. Livesay does acknowledge that after the Homestead strike the public ''rightly'' blamed Carnegie for the dispute, and although Carnegie knew he could not erase the memory of it he would ''try to bury it under new achievements,'' namely philanthropy and publicly supporting progressive ideals. In this sense, we know that Carnegie could be sensitive about what others thought about him, even if he did not always show it.
Yet when it simply comes down to the issue of Carnegie's personal life, this is not the biography one should read. When Andrew Carnegie and the Rise of Big Business was first released, reviewer Lawrence Murray stated that the main weakness of the book was Livesay's ''uneven treatment of Carnegie's personal life,'' and also said that for the individual who wants ''an examination and analysis of Carnegie's life that approaches the definitive'' one should consult Joseph Wall's biography. Adding further, Murray mentioned Livesay's own admission that he was dependent on Wall's research. But Murray's criticisms, while true, also miss the point. Livesay did not set out to write a full-fledged biography of Carnegie, seeking to examine every motive of his personal life. Furthermore, Murray's suggestion that Livesay delves into ''highly speculative psycho-history'' seems over the top, especially compared to many biographies written today, in which psycho-history seems to be the new fashion.
In the same vain, though certainly more complimentary, reviewer Albro Martin said that while there were ''few points to find fault with this book,'' when it comes to incisive biographies of America's industrial leaders like Carnegie, scholars should ''give us more.'' But although scholars would eventually give ''more,'' Martin is correct when he says that ''there is nothing second-hand about this witty, incisive, and critical treatment'' of Carnegie's life. Martin seems to understand Livesay's goal with this book -- as opposed to Murray -- especially when he recommends teachers to assign the book to students, that it is a primer for diving into the career of Carnegie.
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In the opinion of this reviewer, Livesay's biography of Carnegie is an excellent place to start for the casual history reader or those interested in how American big business got its start. Because most definitive biographies are rather long, and thus take quite some time to read, Livesay's book instead can be read in a matter of a week or two and give the reader a good foundation on Carnegie and late nineteenth century American business. One glaring weakness is that the book occasionally gets bogged down into the specifics of the business world, and for the reader not well versed in business terminology and practices, it gets quite dull at times. Livesay does his best work describing Carnegie's rise to power, then tails off when Carnegie becomes king of his domain. But perhaps that is why rags-to-riches stories, straight out of the Horatio Alger mold, are so popular, and why reading about arrogant, super-rich businessmen can get boring so fast. Americans like to read about those in pursuit of achieving the ''American dream'' more so than they like to read about extremely successful people for whom they can no longer relate to. For most people, it is impossible to relate to Andrew Carnegie, ''richest man in the world.'' But for those people who scratch and claw everyday to achieve their dreams, young Andrew Carnegie is worth studying, and that is why Harold Livesay's Andrew Carnegie and the Rise of Big Business is still worth reading.