0143112449
David Nasaw
Notes
There was something about the lad that inspired older Scottish men to entrust him with responsibilities he was not quite ready for.
…to prosper at business he would have to move off the factory floor into the backroom offices…As long as he stayed at O’Rielly’s, he would be “an employee, and the highest station I could reasonably expect to attain to was Manager of an office with seven or eight hundred a year.” That was not enough.
“‘Friendship with all, entangling alliances with none.”
George Washington
In the past he had looked to his partners, Scott and Thomson, to include him in their investments. But from this point on, he intended to scout out his own opportunities…Only invest in companies you have investigated yourself; only invest in companies about which you have insider knowledge; only invest in companies that sell goods or services for which demand is growing; never invest as an individual, but always with a group of trusted associates who together will own a controlling or dominant interest in the company… He had neither the cash nor the interest in tagging along as a junior partner in an enterprise he was not going to control…Each of the partners had pledged to pay for his interest in the company on the installment plan. When, following the Panic of 1873, they had trouble doing so, Carnegie bought them out. “That is what gave me my leading interest in this steel business…. I had to buy so many of them out during the panic that I became the controlling” partner.
The tens of thousands of dollars Carnegie earned in the four years he held the Columbia Oil stock were quickly reinvested in other projects….man of character was one who made things happen, who carried through on his promises, who acted when others might procrastinate.
Carnegie set himself a pattern he would follow for the rest of his life: declaring a vacation, disappearing from the workplace, and leaving his partners to look after his affairs…Carnegie’s business had suffered not at all from his lengthy absences, in large part because every other partner remained active…His Pittsburgh enterprises had succeeded because he had carefully chosen competent business partners he could trust.
One of Carnegie’s many gifts as a businessman was his capacity to generate enthusiasm for his projects—in partners, potential customers, and the public at large.
The key to his success was the scale of his operation and his insistence on producing more each year than he had the year before…“fill the works at a small margin of profit—get our rails upon the leading lines next year. The year after, take my word for it, you will make profit enough.” “Don’t be greedy,” he warned Shinn the following month, “‘small profits & large sales’ in golden letters above your desk is respectfully recommended.”
“‘What I do,’ he said, ‘is to get good men, and I never give them orders. My directions seldom go beyond suggestions. Here in the morning I get reports from them. Within an hour I have disposed of everything, sent out all of my suggestions, the day’s work is done, and I am ready to go out and enjoy myself.’
Carnegie’s need to be always in the company of the wise and powerful was overwhelming. He cared little for the size of a man’s pocketbook, much more for the quality of his mind and the extent of his political influence.