Word: andrews
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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...been accounted for and that the system was running smoothly by Nov. 17. Were the above 100 percent readings three days later just a fluke, or were they the output of a normally functioning system? What's truly going on? Perhaps inquiries should be forwarded to British mathematician Andrew Wiles, who gained celebrity for his complicated proof of Fermat's Last Theorem, to see if he can provide a solution. Of course, I myself have discovered a remarkable little explanation, but unfortunately this column is too short to contain...
Three men--Andrew Carnegie, John D. Rockefeller and J. Pierpont Morgan--personified this sweeping turn-of-the-century transformation. Imbued with all the greed, guile and enterprise of the age, they exhibited a bullish faith in America's future despite the depressions, strikes and financial panics that punctuated these tumultuous years. In their different ways, each dealt a mortal blow to the small-scale economy of the early republic, fostering vast industries that forever altered the size and scope of the nation's business...
Carnegie (1835-1919), the son of a master weaver in Dunfermline, Scotland, saw his boyhood paradise torn asunder when his father's skills were rendered obsolete by the power loom. The Carnegies had to emigrate to the foul Pittsburgh, Pa., slums when Andrew was 12. Quick-witted, shrewd and resilient, he survived a Dickensian adolescence that included working as a bobbin boy in a textile mill...
Rockefeller, Carnegie and Morgan were not the only robber barons, of course. Edward H. Harriman fought Morgan for control of the railroads. Andrew and Richard Mellon founded four major companies, including Alcoa. But the scale on which Rockefeller, Carnegie and Morgan operated was unprecedented, paving the way for a world of global companies and capital flows. And their money built a platform for philanthropy that has grown every bit as much as their corporations...
This Puritan disdain for ostentation is a cherished tradition. After all, Thomas Paine penned Common Sense hoping to liberate Americans from the grip of ostentatious English aristocrats. In fact, the most poignant lesson in U.S. history teaches that today's Horatio Alger (see Andrew Carnegie) is tomorrow's robber baron (see Andrew Carnegie)--unless, of course, the baron performs a useful public service, such as owning a pro sports team or three, like 60-year-old Ted Turner, who also recently gave a billion dollars to the United Nations for humanitarian causes. Turner was following the tradition of the Astors...