The Naked Negotiator

If you want to read a fascinating biography of a legendary dealmaker, philanthropist, and robber baron read David Nasaw’s biography, Andrew Carnegie (Penguin Press, 2006).

Although he stood just under five foot tall, Andrew Carnegie (1835-1919), as a dealmaker and corporate capitalist, consistently outgunned J.D. Rockerfeller and J.P. Morgan, the two other giants of the Gilded Age.

Carnegie was a remarkable dealmaker, salesman and negotiator who outwitted Rockerfeller and Morgan in most of their big deals. He was often unscrupulous. His business dealings were often unethical though not necessarily illegal at the time.

Carnegie is best known as a union buster. Yet early in his career he was lauded when a proposal for a farsighted deal to steelworkers tying wages to profits, so that both the bosses and the workers would share in good times and in bad. The union agreed to cut wages and increase working hours during a market downturn.

However, when the boom time returned, Carnegie reneged on his promises. The steel workers went on strike calling him a liar, hypocrite and scoundrel.

Carnegie believed it was contrary to the “laws of civilization” to pay workers more than the minimum they needed. To pay workers more than they needed was to “encourage the slothful, the drunken and unworthy.”

The great benefactor who bequeathed libraries, museums and vocational schools to the nation was happy to see his chief manager call in the Pinkerton guards who fired on striking workers.

President Teddy Roosevelt believed that, “if Carnegie had employed his fortune and his time to doing justice to the steelworkers who gave him his fortune, he would have accomplished a thousand times what he accomplished” with his generous philanthropy.

I agree with Roosevelt.  What do you think?

Popularity: 64% [?]