Project: The Men Who Built America
EPISODE 3
A RIVALRY IS BORN
The Gilded Age
EPISODE 3 MISSION
Directions: Write the episode mission below in the "Episode Mission" box of your Episode 3 Lesson Chronicles.
I can tell you the part that Andrew Carnegie played in building America.
EPISODE 3 OVERVIEW
Directions: Read the Episode 2 Overview below.
Andrew Carnegie is an immigrant from Scotland who arrives in the U.S. with his parents and starts working at age 12. He finds a patron in railroad industrialist Tom Scott who teaches him about the business. Scott hires him to build a bridge over the Mississippi River to link East and West. Carnegie agrees even though the project carries risk. He finds his answer in steel.
The bridge opens in 1874. Before Carnegie realizes the full potential of steel, his mentor Tom Scott dies in a state of humiliation over the success of John D. Rockefeller’s oil pipeline. Carnegie vows to have his revenge and outdo Rockefeller. With the steel industry thriving, U.S. cities start to grow. But can Carnegie stay at the top of his game?
The bridge opens in 1874. Before Carnegie realizes the full potential of steel, his mentor Tom Scott dies in a state of humiliation over the success of John D. Rockefeller’s oil pipeline. Carnegie vows to have his revenge and outdo Rockefeller. With the steel industry thriving, U.S. cities start to grow. But can Carnegie stay at the top of his game?
EPISODE 3 VOCABULARY WORDS & TERMS
Directions: Write the vocabulary words and terms below in the "Vocabulary and Terms" box of your Episode 1 Lesson Chronicles.
Bessemer Process: when oxygen is blown on white, hot molten iron to produce steel
Andrew Carnegie: a Scottish born immigrant who became the major steel industry tycoon and one of the wealthiest men during the Gilded Age capital: wealth in the form of money, property, or investment used or available to use to make more money capitalism: an economy in which a nation's trade and industry are controlled by private businessmen for profit, rather than by the government of the nation cartel: a union formed between two or more companies or industries with the purpose of controlling prices or limiting competition corporation: a way of organizing a business where the business is divided into shares and sold to stockholders who would share all the profits and losses James Eads: the first civil engineer to use steel in bridge construction financing: money to fund a big purchase or project that is borrowed from the bank or paid for by investors Henry Frick: chairman of Carnegie Steel who caused the Johnstown Flood of 1889 immigrant: a person who comes to a nation to live there permanently Johnstown Flood: a disaster caused when the South Fork Dam collapsed on May, 31, 1889, and flooded Johnstown, Pennsylvania killing more than 2,200 people manufacture: to make, process, or refine raw materials into a finished product using large machines in a factory mentor: someone who teaches or gives help and advice to a less experienced and often younger person Tom Scott: railroad industrialist and mentor to Andrew Carnegie steel: a commonly used alloy made when a small amount of carbon is combined with iron making it lighter, stronger, slower to rust, and more flexible than iron |
EPISODE 3 GUIDE
Directions: While Watching Episode 3: A Rivalry Is Born, answer each of the following questions in the "Episode Guide" section of your Episode 3 Lesson Chronicles. You should read one question ahead so that you are always listening for the answers you need. If you are absent, you can view the Episode by clicking on the link below.
- The key to success for any railroad is getting across the _________________________. Once you get across it you can move west.
- One striking thing about Carnegie and this is true of the great ______________________ is they're willing to take risks.
- When describing Carnegie, Steve Case says,“You have to be patient and have _____________________________ and have a sense of where you want to go, and having the ________________________ to still believe in your idea even when everyone else is saying, well, why are you wasting your time on this.
- ____________________________ is the strongest material ever made. It is created by mixing iron with carbon at over 2,000 degrees but was rare because it was extremely expensive, and difficult to mass produce.
- Carnegie is willing to have enough confidence in his _____________ to put everything he's got into it, and he's willing to convince others that he knows what that ______________ is going to be.
- _____________________________, has created a device that cuts the time to manufacture a single steel rail from two weeks to 15 minutes. Carnegie understands the value of the new technology and begins to adapt it.
- If you can't embrace both __________________, or the possibility of it, or the tremendous fear of it, you can't be wildly successful.
- The difference between people who succeed and people who fail is __________________________. Do you work to overcome it? Or do you let it defeat you? And it is actually what distinguishes very successful people from others.
- The day the bridge opens, Carnegie, who is also a master publicist, sets up a parade across the bridge that's led by an _____________.
- Sprawled over 100 acres just outside of _______________________ Carnegie's steel mill is the largest in the nation.
- When the growth looks unstoppable the railroad industry--the backbone of the American economy collapses and the nation is thrown into the worst ________________ it's ever seen.
- The _________________ makes Andrew Carnegie one of the wealthiest men in America.
- Hiring _________________________ may be the worst decision of Carnegie's career.
- America's __________________ growth is being led by a group of extraordinary men. Commodore Cornelius Vanderbilt creates the biggest railroad company in the country. John D.Rockefeller uses standard oil's refining capabilities to light homes from coast to coast. Now Andrew Carnegie is using mass produced steel to erect buildings that touch the sky. Making the country stronger than it's ever been before.
- By ramping up production, Carnegie and Frick are able to use the proceeds to __________________________ throughout Ohio and Pennsylvania.
- Through __________________ and fear Frick renegotiates favorable contracts with suppliers and eliminated unnecessary expenses while upping production.
- Carnegie rewards Frick by making him ____________________.
- Frick, purchases land in the hills east of Pittsburgh. On it, he builds a members only club for some of the wealthiest men in the country called ________________________________.
- To create their playground, the club takes control of the _______________, holding 20 million tons of water and the largest of its kind in the world.
- Just 14 miles downriver lies __________________ (Johnstown), a working class community of steel workers and their families, who live under the constant threat that the next rainstorm will wash away the dam.
- Frick orders that the road above the dam be widened so that his carriage can pass over it. To widened the road, the dam must be lowered. By lowering the dam, Frick _______________ it.
EPISODE 3 DISCUSSION QUESTIONS
Directions: After Watching Episode 3: A Rivalry Is Born, you will participate in a small group discussion. In your groups, you will use our "Great Answer Strategy" to discuss and answer the following questions in your Episode 3 Lesson Chronicles.
The Great Answer Strategy
Discussion Questions
1.) What was the Bessemer Process and how did it transform the construction industry?
2.) What were infrastructure projects? Why were they so important to American growth?
3.) Compare and contrast Andrew Carnegie and John D. Rockefeller.
2.) What were infrastructure projects? Why were they so important to American growth?
3.) Compare and contrast Andrew Carnegie and John D. Rockefeller.
EPISODE 3 INVESTIGATION
Directions: Click on the icon below to listen to a real recording of Andrew Carnegie reading an essay he wrote entitled, Wealth". Follow along by reading the written version under the recording icon as he reads. Answer the questions in the Episode 3 Investigation Box of your Episode 3 Chronicles.
Andrew Carnegie Recording on "Wealth"
Questions on Andrew Carnegie's Recording on "Wealth"
- What does Carnegie say is the duty of the wealthy in the first paragraph?
- According to the second paragraph, the wealthy must be __________________ when being charitable to avoid encouraging laziness, drunkenness, and mismanaging money.
- Carnegie believed that the wealthy should only give charity to help those _________________________________________.
- What does Carnegie mean by, "more injury may be done by promoting vice than by relieving virtue," in the fourth paragraph?
- What does Carnegie mean by, "The laws of accumulation should be left free," in the fifth paragraph.
- In the last paragraph, Carnegie says, " the man who dies thus rich, dies disgraced." What does he mean by this?
END OF THE EPISODE 3 LESSON
Directions: You have completed the Episode 3 Lesson of the Men Who Built America Project. Click on the icon below to go back to the Project Homepage.