Career
Andrew Carnegie made a good deal of money from stock investing, and in 1853 purchased their rented home on Rebecca Street. In 1858, after Andrew had been appointed Thomas Scott's assistant, the Carnegie family sold their Rebecca Street home and bought a large home in Altoona. Andrew was appointed superintendent of the western division of the Pennsylvania Railroad in 1859, and he made Thomas (who had quit school) his assistant. (This was not the end of Thomas' schooling. As an adult, he would later take classes at Duff College.)
The family moved back to Pittsburgh in 1859, residing at 10 Hancock Street (later renamed Eighth Street, and now part of the Downtown Pittsburgh central business district). But the pollution from nearby factories and iron forges proved too much, and after only a few short months on Hancock Street Andrew purchased a Victorian home for Thomas and their mother in Homewood, then a middle-class village on the edge of Pittsburgh. Andrew and Thomas rode the train to and from work together, and attended the theater frequently.
In 1861, Andrew persuaded Thomas to invest in the Columbia Oil Company, and it paid off handsomely. That Andrew Carnegie should ask an 18-year-old boy to be a stock investor was not unusual. When Andrew traveled to Scotland with his mother and a friend in 1862, he left Thomas in charge of his numerous business affairs (assets by that time nearing $47,860 or $8.5 million in 2009 inflation-adjusted dollars).
Read more about this topic: Thomas M. Carnegie
Famous quotes containing the word career:
“He was at a starting point which makes many a man’s career a fine subject for betting, if there were any gentlemen given to that amusement who could appreciate the complicated probabilities of an arduous purpose, with all the possible thwartings and furtherings of circumstance, all the niceties of inward balance, by which a man swings and makes his point or else is carried headlong.”
—George Eliot [Mary Ann (or Marian)
“They want to play at being mothers. So let them. Expressing tenderness in their own way will not prevent girls from enjoying a successful career in the future; indeed, the ability to nurture is as valuable a skill in the workplace as the ability to lead.”
—Anne Roiphe (20th century)
“I doubt that I would have taken so many leaps in my own writing or been as clear about my feminist and political commitments if I had not been anointed as early as I was. Some major form of recognition seems to have to mark a woman’s career for her to be able to go out on a limb without having her credentials questioned.”
—Ruth Behar (b. 1956)