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)
“From a hasty glance through the various tests I figure it out that I would be classified in Group B, indicating “Low Average Ability,” reserved usually for those just learning to speak the English Language and preparing for a career of holding a spike while another man hits it.”
—Robert Benchley (1889–1945)
“A black boxer’s career is the perfect metaphor for the career of a black male. Every day is like being in the gym, sparring with impersonal opponents as one faces the rudeness and hostility that a black male must confront in the United States, where he is the object of both fear and fascination.”
—Ishmael Reed (b. 1938)