pneumatic compression devices and
drugs.
The study was sponsored by
Sanofi-Aventis, which sells Lovenox, a drug approved to reduce the risk of
blood clots in the veins.
Photo Finish
Remains of a bus-sized prehistoric
"monster" reptile found on a remote Arctic island may be a new
species never before recorded by science, researchers said Tuesday.
Initial excavation of a site on the
Svalbard islands in August yielded the remains, teeth, skull fragments and
vertebrae of a reptile estimated to measure nearly 40 feet long, said Joern
Harald Hurum of the University of Oslo.
"It seems the monster is a new
species," he told The Associated Press.
The reptile appears be the same
species as another sea predator whose remains were found nearby on Svalbard
last year. His team described those 150-million-year-old remains as belonging
to a short-necked plesiosaur measuring more than 30 feet _ "as long as a
bus ... with teeth larger than cucumbers."
The short-necked plesiosaur was a
voracious reptile often compared to the Tyrannosaurus rex of the oceans.
Mark Evans, a plesiosaur expert at the
Leicester City Museums in Britain, said he not know enough about the Norwegian
find to comment on it specifically. But he said new types of the sea reptiles
are being found regularly.
"We are regularly seeing new
species of plesiosaurs popping up _ in a way because, in the past 10 or 15
years, there has been what we call a renaissance in plesiosaur research,"
Evans said by telephone.
Hurum said the team had only managed
to excavate a 3-meter area of the find. The Norwegian-led team plans to present
more detailed findings early next year, and return to Svalbard, 300 miles north
of Norway's mainland, to excavate further next year.
During the two-week field period the
palaeontologists documented a remarkable 28 skeletons, ranging from two to ten
meters in length. The discovery ranks Svalbard as one of the world's four most
productive sites for the remains of marine reptiles.
Pliosaurus, one of the largest-ever
marine predators, lived in the ocean and hunted other smaller marine reptiles.
Could it be that the
"natural" mental decline that afflicts many older people is related
to how much lead they absorbed decades before?
Mount Sinai's Andrew Todd uses an
acrylic leg and human bones to calibrate lead measurement.
That's the provocative idea emerging
from some recent studies, part of a broader area of new research that suggests
some pollutants can cause harm that shows up only years after someone is
exposed.
The new work suggests long-ago lead
exposure can make an aging person's brain work as if it's five years older than
it really is. If that's verified by more research, it means that sharp cuts in
environmental lead levels more than 20 years ago didn't stop its widespread
effects.
"We're trying to offer a caution
that a portion of what has been called normal aging might in fact be due to
ubiquitous environmental exposures like lead," says Dr. Brian Schwartz of
Johns Hopkins University.
"The fact that it's happening
with lead is the first proof of principle that it's possible," said
Schwartz, a leader in the study of lead's delayed effects. Other pollutants
like mercury and pesticides may do the same thing, he said.
In fact, some recent research does
suggest that being exposed to pesticides raises the risk of getting Parkinson's
disease a decade or more later. Experts say such studies in mercury are
lacking.
The notion of long-delayed effects is
familiar; tobacco and asbestos, for example, can lead to cancer. But in recent
years, scientists are coming to appreciate that exposure to other pollutants in
early life also may promote disease much later on. Video Watch CNN's Elizabeth
Cohen explain more about lead's long-term effects on the brain ».
"It's an emerging area" for
research, said Dr. Philip Landrigan of the Mount Sinai School of Medicine in
New York. It certainly makes sense that if a substance destroys brain cells in
early life, the brain may cope by drawing on its reserve capacity until it
loses still more cells with aging, he said. Only then would symptoms like
forgetfulness or tremors appear.
Linda Birnbaum, director of
experimental toxicology at the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, said
infant mice exposed to chemicals like PCBs show only very subtle effects in
young adulthood. But more dramatic harm in areas like movement and learning
appears when they reach old age.
Animal studies also show clear
evidence that being exposed to harmful substances in the womb can harm health
later on, she said. For example, rodents that encounter PCBs or dioxins before
birth are more susceptible to cancer once they grow up.
Studying delayed effects in people is
difficult because they generally must be followed for a long time. Research
with lead is easier because scientists can measure the amount that has
accumulated in the shinbone over decades and get a read on how much lead a
person has been exposed to in the past.
Lead in the blood, by contrast,
reflects recent exposure. Virtually all Americans have lead in their blood, but
the amounts are far lower today than in the past.
The big reason for the drop: the
phasing out of lead in gasoline from 1976 to 1991. Because of that and
accompanying measures, the average lead level in the blood of American adults
fell 30 percent by 1980 and about 80 percent by 1990.
That's a major success story for
environmentalists. But work by Schwartz and Dr. Howard Hu of the University of
Michigan suggests that the long-term effects of the high-lead era are still
being felt.
In 2006, Schwartz and his colleagues
published a study of about 1,000 Baltimore, Maryland, residents. They were ages
50 to 70, old enough to have absorbed plenty of lead before it disappeared from
gasoline. They probably got their peak doses in the 1960s and 1970s, Schwartz
said, mostly by inhaling air pollution from vehicle exhaust and from other
sources in the environment.
The researchers estimated each
person's lifetime dose by scanning their shinbones for lead. Then they gave
each one a battery of mental ability tests.
In brief, the scientists found that
the higher the lifetime lead dose, the poorer the performance across a wide
variety of mental functions, like verbal and visual memory and language
ability. From low to high dose, the difference in mental functioning was about
the equivalent of aging by two to six years.
"We think that's a large
effect," Schwartz said.
Hu and his colleagues took a slightly
different approach in a 2004 study of 466 men with an average age of 67. Those
men took a mental-ability test twice, about four years apart on average. Those
with the highest bone lead levels showed more decline between exams than those
with smaller levels, with the effect of the lead equal to about five years of
aging.
Nobody is claiming that lead is the
sole cause of age-related mental decline, but it appears to be one of several
factors involved, Hu stressed.
If so, it would join such possible
influences as high blood pressure, diabetes, stroke, emotional stress and maybe
education level, said Bradley Wise of the National Institute on Aging. Nobody
knows exactly what causes mental decline with age, he said.
Although the studies by Hu and
Schwartz suggest lead is involved, Wise and others say they don't prove the
link.
"I think many things impact how
we age, but I think right now it's maybe premature to be giving lead a huge
role in our age-related cognitive decline," said Dr. Margit L. Bleecker,
director of the Center for Occupational and Environmental Neurology in
Baltimore. Still, she called the lead hypothesis "a very interesting idea"
deserving more study.
Others were more impressed.
"The new evidence from these
studies should concern people" said epidemiologist Andrew Rowland of the
University of New Mexico. "These two research groups are finding adverse
effects on the aging brain at low levels of lead exposure. More work needs to
be done, but these studies are raising important questions."
In any case, scientists still face
some basic mysteries about the delayed effects of lead. For example, when does
it actually harm the brain? Does a high level in the shinbone merely identify
those who were the most harmed by chronic exposure decades ago? Or does lead in
the bone continue to do its dirty work over a lifetime, leaching into the
bloodstream and continuously hammering the brain?
"I think that both things are
happening," Schwartz said, though he suspects most of the damage occurred
in the past, during years of higher exposure. Hu's suspicions are similar.
Health Library
Just how lead impairs brainpower is
still a mystery. And so is the question of whether anything can be done to help
people who have absorbed a lot of lead over a lifetime.
A medical procedure called chelation
can remove lead from the body, but it wouldn't help in this case, said experts,
who had few suggestions.
For younger people, prevention is a
clearer strategy, Hu said. He called for tougher federal standards on lead
exposure in the workplace.
And plenty of low-income neighborhoods
could use a strong effort to remove lead from old houses, many of which still
have lead paint, Rowland said. "It's there on the walls, it's on the
radiators, it's underneath the top layers of paint. In places where the paint
is crumbling, there's still exposure going on," he said.
Yet another question: Who really has
to worry about long-ago lead affecting their brainpower? What about people born
after the high lead levels of the 1970s were history?
Schwartz noted that most Americans
younger than 30 have gotten much less lead from the environment than the men in
his study did. And Hu hopes that the lead effect will peter out in the future.
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However, Hu points out that there's
still lead in the environment, and exposure remains especially high in many
developing countries. And citing evidence that lead can cross the placenta, he
says women who grew up in the 1970s might dose their fetuses with the metal.
"Kids who grew up in the 21st
century have a lot less to worry about" than their elders, Hu said. But
"it's hard for me to be totally optimistic the current generation is
completely scot-free."
Susquehanna Twp.-based Capital
BlueCross is the scrappy local insurer that nearly got crushed by a giant, but
fought back to dominate the 21-county central Pennsylvania market.
Now it wants permission to compete all
over the state and take on an even bigger giant that would rise up following
the proposed merger of Highmark Inc. and Independence Blue Cross.
Otherwise, a new health insurance
colossus will stomp out competition in Pennsylvania, and consumers will take
more of a beating on health care costs, Capital BlueCross CEO Anita Smith said.
She made that argument Wednesday at a
state Senate Banking and Insurance Committee hearing on the Highmark-Independence
merger, which needs state approval.
The committee is dominated by
Republicans, who were receptive to Smith's arguments in favor of more
competition.
But Smith had pointed exchanges with
Sen. Robert Mellow, D-Lackawanna County, who said she put on a good
"performance," but accused her of inaccuracy.
Mellow said Smith's arguments ignored
Capital's absorption of a Lehigh County-based Blues plan in the mid-1980s, and
merger discussions with Blue Cross of Northeastern Pennsylvania a few years
later.
Smith said those actions occurred
before her time as a top executive at Capital BlueCross, and she stood by her
statements.
Mellow said he wanted to ask many more
questions and called for an additional hearing.
State Sen. Don White, R-Indiana
County, the committee chairman, acknowledged the need for another session. No
date was set.
Capital BlueCross, with 4,000
employees, operates in a 21-county market that extends from State College
through the Lehigh Valley. It has a 5.3 percent slice of the Pennsylvania
market. Capital and Highmark were partners until 2001 and now compete in the 21
counties.
Highmark, another major employer in
the Harrisburg area, also dominates in western Pennsylvania. Independence is
based in Philadelphia. A combined Highmark-Independence would control 53
percent of the state health insurance market.
Smith said Capital BlueCross won't
oppose the merger as long as the state imposes conditions to ensure
competition.
She said the Capital-Highmark split
has made central Pennsylvania the state's most competitive health insurance
market, and consumers have benefited.
Smith claimed that Highmark and
Independence aim to eliminate competition across the state. She said the two
insurers signed a secret 1996 agreement not to compete against each other.
Highmark spokesman Michael Weinstein
said the agreement was signed by a corporate predecessor of Highmark, which
sold an HMO plan to Independence. The agreement was approved by the state
Insurance Department and federal antitrust authorities, Weinstein wrote in an
e-mail.
Highmark and Independence said the
purpose of their merger is to improve efficiency and reduce health insurance
premiums.
Dr. Ken Melani, CEO at Highmark, would
head the combined insurance operation. He has said there's no need for
competing Blues plans.
Creating the biggest possible
"pool' of people is the best way to keep health care affordable, he
contends.
If you've ever heard of equity-indexed
annuities (EIAs), there's a good chance you did so from your mom or dad. And
there's a good chance they learned about them at a "free seminar." I
know that that's how I first heard about them. My dad enjoyed the free meal and
the sales pitch (er ... seminar), but told me he was skeptical about the EIA he
was being pitched. He understood that this particular EIA would put a cap on
his potential gains. Well, it turns out dad may have been more right than he
realized.
At allfinancialmatters.com, one
blogger offered a similar take on his dad's experience with an EIA pitch. He
made a particularly good point: While EIAs are often compared to the S&P
500, with sellers concluding that the EIAs are the better choice, that doesn't
seem right. An EIA will often feature gains capped at a certain level, along
with the benefit of never losing any money: If the market tanks in a given
year, your loss is zero.
The EIA that the blogger used as his
example capped investors' gains each year at 10%. Well, given that the S&P
500's average annual return over the long haul is near 10%, including down
years, the EIA is already comparing unfavorably. That's because in good years,
your gain will be a maximum of just 10%, and not much higher, as can sometimes
happen. In 2003, for example, the S&P 500 rose more than 28%! Your gain in
the EIA? 10%. In 2006, it rose more than 15%. Your gain in the EIA? 10%.
You might argue that when it plunges, as
in 2002, when it fell 22%, your loss would be zero. But remember that the
S&P 500's average return of 10% includes those down years. [Note also that
while the historic average return is around 10%, that's in no way what you
should expect over your investing time frame. You might earn slightly or
considerably more or less.]
The blogger crunched a bunch of
numbers, simulating investments in an EIA and the S&P 500 from 1950 onward.
He found that the annuity would have returned less than 7% annually, compared
to nearly 10.5% for the S&P 500. Ouch!
According to his analysis, the reason
why the numbers worked out this way is because of how the market cycles up and
down. He found 34 years when the S&P 500 rose more than 10%, but just 13
years with negative returns. As a result, the benefits of avoiding losses
within the annuity were outweighed by the loss of return during great years.
Finally, another consideration is
fees, which are often charged yearly whether you make money that year or not.
If you're looking at EIAs, be sure to look hard at the annual fees, just as you
would with a mutual fund. The blog analysis assumed fees of 1.5% for the
S&P 500 option, but you can find index funds that are much cheaper. ETFs
like SPDR Trust (AMEX: SPY) or Vanguard Total Stock (AMEX: VTI) offer an
inexpensive proxy for the broad market.
A contaminated anticancer drug made by
one of China's largest pharmaceutical companies underscores how quality-control
problems continue to plague the Chinese drug industry. There is no sign the
tainted leukemia drug was exported. But the case provides a cautionary tale as
Western pharmaceutical companies start outsourcing some manufacturing to China.
Last June, Yan Zhenni, a 5-year-old
with leukemia from Shanghai, received a shot of the anticancer medication
methotrexate. But the drug meant to treat her left her incontinent and unable
to walk on her own, her mother says.
• The News: A leukemia medicine made by a unit of one of
China's largest drug companies was found to be contaminated.
• The Big Picture: Although no tainted products were exported,
the case highlights quality-control problems in China's drug industry as
Western companies look to produce more medicines there.
Possibly dozens of patients across
China who took the drug from the same Chinese factory had similar problems. The
drug's manufacturer initially said the reactions might be a side effect of the
medication. Later, government officials investigating reports of problems with
the drug discovered the medicine had been contaminated, blamed its maker for a
coverup and revoked the factory's license to make the drug.
"We were so hopeful that she
would recover from leukemia eventually. The chances were very good. But now
even walking has become a problem," says 28-year-old Ms. Yan, who took a
leave from her job at an auto-parts factory to care for her daughter.
Over the past year, a spate of safety
problems involving Chinese-made products has surfaced, mostly involving
small-scale factories operating with little scrutiny. But the tainted leukemia
drug given to Yan Zhenni was made by a subsidiary of one of China's largest and
more prominent drug companies, Shanghai Pharmaceutical (Group) Co. Other units
of the company make medicines in collaboration with a number of multinational
drug companies, although there is no sign that the quality-control problems
affected other divisions.
Major drug companies are quickly
moving to conduct research and some manufacturing in China, as costs in the
U.S. rise and they face hurdles in bringing new drugs to market and defending
existing blockbusters against generic competition. AstraZeneca PLC,
GlaxoSmithKline PLC, Pfizer Inc. and Bristol-Myers Squibb Co. have all recently
announced plans to outsource some of their manufacturing capacity.
China is still a relatively small
player when it comes to exporting finished pills, a market that India's
generic-drug makers dominate. But China is the world's largest producer of
active pharmaceutical ingredients, the chemicals needed to produce drugs. In
2005, China had $4.4 billion, or 14%, of the world's $31 billion market for
APIs, ahead of Italy and India, the world's second- and third-largest players
respectively, according to a report last year from Credit Suisse.
Shanghai Pharma has teamed up with a
number of multinational drug companies over the years and says it exports APIs
around the world. The group's products are sold in countries including the
U.S., Canada, Mexico, the U.K., India and Japan, according to Neil Wang,
general manager in China for the research and consulting firm Frost &
Sullivan.
Roche Holding AG of Basel,
Switzerland, set up a joint venture with Shanghai Pharma in 1994 called
Shanghai Roche Pharmaceuticals, according to a media officer for Roche, who
emphasized that Roche has no connection with the subsidiary that produced the
tainted medicine. The factory makes most, if not all, of the drugs Roche sells
in China, she says.
Pfizer has signed a deal with Shanghai
Pharma in which a unit of the Chinese company would produce a hormonal steroid
for Pfizer at one of its factories, the Shanghai Pharmaceutical Group Hualian
Pharmaceutical Factory, according to a person in the foreign trade department
at Shanghai Pharma. The plant that Pfizer is partnered with isn't the same as
the one that produced the tainted drug.
Pfizer spokesman Chris Loder couldn't
confirm the hormonal steroid agreement with Shanghai Pharma. He did say in a
statement: "In 2006, Pfizer entered into an agreement with Shanghai Pharmaceutical
Group in China to evaluate SPG's capabilities as an ingredient supplier. To
date, SPG has not met the standards required by Pfizer for suppliers of active
pharmaceutical ingredients." As a result, Mr. Loder said, Pfizer hasn't
sourced any API for human use in the U.S. or elsewhere.
The U.S. Food and Drug Administration
says none of the tainted drugs from the Shanghai Pharma unit involved, Shanghai
Hualian Pharmaceutical Co., were manufactured for the U.S.
In November 2006, Yan Zhenni was
diagnosed with leukemia, a cancer of the cells that make up blood or bone
marrow. The following year, on June 2, 2007, she received an injection of
methotrexate, a drug commonly used to treat leukemia, at the Children's
Hospital of Fudan University in Shanghai.
Around eight days later, according to
her mother, the girl started to show unusual symptoms. "She started to
have problems walking, had no strength, and was unable to climb stairs,"
recalls Ms. Yan. On June 19, the mother sent her daughter back to the hospital,
but doctors weren't sure what was causing her problems. They said a viral
infection might be the culprit. They prescribed antibiotics, but that didn't
help. On June 27, Yan Zhenni left the hospital and returned home.
Just over a week later, however, Ms.
Yan received a call from the hospital telling her that the drug her daughter
received, which had been made by the Hualian factory, was contaminated. The
girl was hospitalized that same day.
Signs of problems with the same drug
began cropping up elsewhere in the country. The First Affiliated Hospital of
Guangxi Medical University reported problems with patients who took the Hualian
drug, a hospital nurse said. In Shanghai, at the Xinhua Hospital, doctors
switched to a similar version of the drug made by Pfizer, said Yuan Xiaojun, a
doctor at the hospital. Dr. Yuan added that he suspected there might have been
impurities in the Hualian medicine, but he wasn't sure.
The Pfizer drug cost significantly
more than the Chinese drug, which was priced at about 50 cents a dose. That
cost differential was daunting for one mother, Fang Yangqing, who traveled from
her home in Anhui province to the Xinhua Hospital to seek treatment for her
4-year-old daughter, Wang Yujie. "The expenditure is too high. I hope the
situation could soon change," she said in July.
Following reports of adverse affects
from the drug, Shanghai Pharma said in July it had stopped selling two batches
of methotrexate, a drug commonly used to treat leukemia, and was conducting a
"thorough investigation." But it also suggested side effects might be
at fault, noting "all drugs have 30% harm, and it's even bigger with
cancer-fighting medicines."
Yin Qinxie, Shanghai Pharma's
spokesman, said in an interview at the time that "so far, we don't think
the quality of this drug has any problems," but that the company had to
investigate "in order to be responsible to the drug's users."
When reached yesterday, Mr. Yin
declined to answer questions, and subsequent efforts to reach him were
unsuccessful.
Also around July 2007, Chinese
officials were pledging to crack down on safety and corruption in the country's
drug industry. In July, Zheng Xiaoyu, the former head of the State Food and
Drug Administration, was executed for taking bribes to speed drug approvals.
By that time, Shanghai drug
authorities, as well as others with the State Food and Drug Administration and
Ministry of Health in Beijing, were investigating the Hualian unit. In a
statement from December, the SFDA accused Hualian of "systematically
covering up irregularities in manufacturing."
For years, Hualian had been recycling
leftover materials from methotrexate's production process to "cut
costs," according to the head of cancer-drug sales for Hualian in
Shanghai, although it is unclear if that caused any problems. But last summer,
a technician mistakenly added another anticancer compound, vincristine sulfate,
to the mix. "It was an accident," the sales official says, denying
there was any coverup.
The technician and a company official
in charge of the manufacturing line have both been detained by police,
according to the Hualian sales official. Production of the cancer drugs have
since ceased, although the company is still making drug ingredients for other
products, according to the sales official.
On Sept. 5, the State Food and Drug
Administration banned the use of Hualian's injectable methotrexate, in addition
to another drug made by Hualian called cytarabine hydrochloride, across the
country.
Hualian has since offered some
families compensation, according to Ms. Yan, who turned down an offer for
$55,000 from the company. She says she and a group of other families have
retained a lawyer in Guangdong province and plan to sue the drug maker.
Carnegie is known for having built one
of the most powerful and influential corporations in United States history,
and, later in his life, giving away most of his riches to fund the
establishment of many libraries, schools, and universities in America, Scotland
and other countries throughout the world. Carnegie, a poor boy with fierce
ambition, a pleasant personality, and a devotion to both hard work and
self-improvement, started as a telegrapher. By the 1860s, he had investments in
railroads, railroad sleeping cars, as well as bridges and oil derricks, and he
built wealth as a bond salesman raising money in Europe for American
enterprise.
Steel was where he found his fortune.
In the 1870s, he founded the Carnegie Steel Company, a step which cemented his
name as one of the “Captains of Industry”. By the 1890s, the company was the
largest and most profitable industrial enterprise in the world. He sold it to
J.P. Morgan's US Steel in 1901 and devoted the remainder of his life to
large-scale philanthropy, with special emphasis on local libraries, world
peace, and scientific research.
He was the son of a hand loom weaver,
William T. Carnegie. His mother, Margaret Morrison, was a daughter of Thomas
Morrison, a tanner and shoemaker. Although his family was impoverished, he grew
up in a cultured, political home.
Many of Carnegie's closest relatives
were self-educated tradesmen and class activists. William Carnegie, although poor,
had educated himself and, as far as his resources would permit, ensured that
his children received an education. William Carnegie was politically active and
was involved with those organizing demonstrations against the Corn laws. He was
also a Chartist. He wrote frequently to newspapers and contributed articles in
the radical pamphlet, Cobbett's Register edited by William Cobbett. Among other
things, he argued for abolition of the rotten boroughs and reform of the
British House of Commons, Catholic Emancipation, and laws governing safety at
work, which were passed many years later in the Factory Acts. He promoted the
abolition of all forms of hereditary privilege, including all monarchies.
Another great influence on the young
Carnegie was his uncle, George Lauder, a proprietor of a small grocer's shop in
Dunfermline High Street. This uncle introduced the young Carnegie to such
historical Scottish heroes as Robert the Bruce, William Wallace, and Rob Roy.
He was introduced to the writings of Robert Burns and Shakespeare. Lauder had
Carnegie commit to memory many pages of Burns' writings.
Another uncle, his mother's brother,
Tom Kennedy, was also a radical political firebrand. A fervent nonconformist,
the chief objects of his tirades were the Church of England and the Church of
Scotland. In 1842, the young Carnegie's radical sentiments were stirred further
at the news of "Ballie" being imprisoned for his part in a
"Cessation of Labour" (strike). At the time, withdrawal of labour by
a hireling was a criminal offense.
Carnegie emigrated from Scotland to
the United States in 1848 at the age of 13.
Some of Carnegie's direct descendants
emigrated back to Scotland and still live there today. William Thomson CBE, his
great grandson, is Chairman of the Carnegie Trust Dunfermline, a trust which
maintains Carnegie's legacy.
Carnegie's education and passion for
reading was given a great boost by Colonel James Anderson, who opened his
personal library of 400 volumes to working boys each Saturday night. Carnegie
was a consistent borrower. He was a "self-made man" in both his economic
development and his intellectual and cultural development. His capacity and
willingness for hard work, his perseverance, and his alertness soon brought
forth opportunities.
In 1851, he became a telegraph
messenger boy in the Pittsburgh Office of the Ohio Telegraph Company, at $2.50
per week. In addition to providing him with an increase in income, the job also
provided him with a lifelong love of William Shakespeare's works. He was
frequently required to deliver messages to a theater, and he often managed to
contrive appearing just as the curtain had been raised on a performance. Using
a charm that was to pay even greater dividends in the future, Carnegie was then
usually able to convince the theater's manager to allow him to stay and watch
the performance for free.
Carnegie quickly taught himself to
distinguish the differing sounds the incoming signals produced and learned to
transcribe signals by ear without having to write them down. Thomas A. Scott of
the Pennsylvania Railroad Company employed him as a secretary/telegraph
operator starting in 1853, at a salary of $4.00 per week. Carnegie was eighteen
and soon began a rapid advancement through the company, eventually becoming the
superintendent of the Pittsburgh Division. Scott also helped him with his first
investments. In 1855 he was able to invest $600 in a successful firm called
Adams Express. Later he invested money in sleeping cars for the Pennsylvania
Railroad Company and bought part of the company making the wagons, which again
turned out to be a very profitable investment. Reinvesting his money in railroad
related industries (iron, bridges, rails) he was able to slowly earn his first
big capital, which would be the basis for his later success.
Before the Civil War, Carnegie had
formed a partnership with a Mr. Woodruff, an inventor of a sleeping car for first
class travel. The sleeping car facilitated business travel at distances over
500 miles. The investment proved a great success and a source of profit for
Woodruff and Carnegie. The young Carnegie became the superintendent of the
Pennsylvania railroad's Western Division, responsible for several improvements
in the service.
In spring 1861 Carnegie was appointed
by Scott, who was now Assistant Secretary of War in charge of military
transportation, as Superintendent of the Military Railways and the Union Government's
telegraph lines in the East. Carnegie helped open the rail lines into
Washington that the rebels had cut; he rode the locomotive that pulled the
first brigade of Union troops to reach Washington. Following the defeat of
Union forces at Bull Run, he personally supervised the transportation of the
defeated forces. Under his organization, the telegraph service rendered
efficient service to the Union cause and significantly assisted in the eventual
victory. He later boasted he was "the first casualty of the war" when
he gained a scar on his cheek from working with telegraph wire.
Defeat of the Confederacy required
vast supplies of munitions, as well as railroads (and telegraph lines) to
deliver the goods. The demand for iron products, such as armor for gunboats,
cannon and shells, as well as a hundred other industrial products, made
Pittsburgh a center of war industry, with its railroads and telegraphs also
essential.
Carnegie proceeded to increase his
wealth through careful investments. In 1864, Carnegie invested $40,000 in
Storey Farm on Oil Creek in Venango County, Pennsylvania. In one year, the farm
yielded over $1,000,000 in cash dividends, and petroleum from oil wells on the
property sold profitably. Carnegie was subsequently associated with others in
establishing a steel rolling mill. Carnegie had some investments in the iron
industry before the war and, after the war, he left the railroads to devote all
his energies to the ironworks trade. Carnegie worked to develop several iron
works, eventually forming The Keystone Bridge Works and the Union Ironworks, in
Pittsburgh. Although he had left the Pennsylvania Railroad Company, he did not
totally sever his links with the railroads. The Keystone Bridge Company made
iron train bridges, and, as company superintendent, Carnegie had noticed the
weakness of the traditional wooden structures. These were replaced in large
numbers with iron bridges made in his works. As well as having good business
sense, Carnegie possessed charm and literary knowledge. He was invited to many
important social functions—functions that Carnegie exploited to his own
advantage.
Carnegie’s philanthropic inclinations
began some time before retirement. He wrote;
“ I
propose to take an income no greater than $50,000 per annum! Beyond this I need
ever earn, make no effort to increase my fortune, but spend the surplus each
year for benevolent purposes! Let us cast aside business forever, except for
others. Let us settle in Oxford and I shall get a thorough education, making
the acquaintance of literary men. I figure that this will take three years
active work. I shall pay especial attention to speaking in public. We can
settle in London and I can purchase a controlling interest in some newspaper or
live review and give the general management of it attention, taking part in
public matters, especially those connected with education and improvement of
the poorer classes. Man must have an idol and the amassing of wealth is one of
the worst species of idolatry! No idol is more debasing than the worship of
money! Whatever I engage in I must push inordinately; therefore should I be
careful to choose that life which will be the most elevating in its character.
To continue much longer overwhelmed by business cares and with most of my
thoughts wholly upon the way to make more money in the shortest time, must
degrade me beyond hope of permanent recovery. I will resign business at
thirty-five, but during these ensuing two years I wish to spend the afternoons
in receiving instruction and in reading systematically!”
Carnegie continued his business
career; some of his literary intentions were fulfilled. During this time, he
made many friends in the literary and political worlds. Among these were such
as Matthew Arnold and Herbert Spencer as well as being in correspondence and
acquaintance with most of the U.S. Presidents, statesmen, and notable writers
of the time. Many were visitors to the Carnegie home. Carnegie greatly admired
Spencer. He did not, however, agree with Spencer's Social Darwinism which held
that philanthropy was a bad idea.
In 1879, he erected commodious
swimming-baths for the use of the people of his hometown of Dunfermline,
Scotland. In the following year, Carnegie gave $40,000 for the establishment of
a free library in the same city. In 1884, he gave $50,000 to Bellevue Hospital
Medical College to found a histological laboratory, now called the Carnegie Laboratory.
In 1881, Carnegie took his family,
which included his mother, then age 70, on a trip to the United Kingdom. They
toured Scotland by coach, having several receptions en-route. The highlight for
them all was a triumphal return to Dunfermline where Carnegie's mother laid the
foundation stone of the "Carnegie Library". Carnegie's criticism of
British society did not point to a dislike of the country of his birth; on the
contrary, one of Carnegie's ambitions was to act as a catalyst for a close
association between the English-speaking peoples. To this end, he purchased, in
the early 1880s, numerous newspapers in England, all of which were to advocate
the abolition of the monarchy and the establishment of "the British
Republic". Carnegie's charm aided by his great wealth meant that he had
many British friends, including Prime Minister Gladstone.
In 1886, Carnegie's younger brother
Thomas died at age 43. Success in the business continued, however. At the same
time as owning steel works, Carnegie had purchased, at low cost, the most
valuable of the iron ore fields around Lake Superior. The same year Carnegie
became a figure of controversy. Following his tour of the UK, he wrote about
his experiences in a book entitled An American Four-in-hand in Britain. Although
still actively involved in running his many businesses, Carnegie had become a
regular contributor of articles to numerous magazines, most notably the
Nineteenth Century, under the editorship of James Knowles, and the North
American Review, whose editor, Lloyd Bryce, oversaw the publication during its
most influential period.
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