Editing Andrew Carnegie (section)

===Railroads=== 
Starting in 1853, when Carnegie was around 18 years old, [[Thomas A. Scott]] of the [[Pennsylvania Railroad]] employed him as a secretary/telegraph operator at a salary of $4.00 per week (${{Inflation|US|4.00|1853|r=0}} by {{#expr:{{CURRENTYEAR}}-1}} inflation). Carnegie accepted the job with the railroad as he saw more prospects for career growth and experience there than with the telegraph company.<ref name="Nasaw"/> When Carnegie was 24 years old, Scott asked him if he could handle being superintendent of the Western Division of the Pennsylvania Railroad.<ref name="Edge 2004 pg. 35">Edge (2004), p. 35.</ref> 

On December 1, 1859, Carnegie officially became superintendent of the Western Division. He hired his sixteen-year-old brother Tom to be his personal secretary and telegraph operator. Carnegie also hired his cousin, Maria Hogan, who became the first female telegraph operator in the country.<ref>Edge (2004), p. 37.</ref> As superintendent, Carnegie made a salary of $1500 a year (${{Inflation|US|1500|1859|r=-3|fmt=c}} by {{#expr:{{CURRENTYEAR}}-1}} inflation).<ref name="Edge 2004 pg. 35"/> His employment by the Pennsylvania Railroad would be vital to his later success. The railroads were the first big businesses in America, and the Pennsylvania was one of the largest. Carnegie learned much about management and cost control during these years, and from Scott in particular.<ref name="Nasaw">[[#Nasaw|Nasaw]], pp. 54–59, 64–65.</ref>

Scott also helped him with his first investments. Many of these were part of the corruption indulged in by Scott and the president of the Pennsylvania Railroad, [[John Edgar Thomson]], which consisted of inside trading in companies with which the railroad did business, or payoffs made by contracting parties "as part of a [[quid pro quo]]".<ref name="Nasaw_pg59_60">[[#Nasaw|Nasaw]], pp. 59–60.</ref> In 1855, Scott made it possible for Carnegie to invest $500 in the [[Adams Express Company]], which contracted with the Pennsylvania to carry its messengers. The money was secured by his mother's placing of a $600 mortgage on the family's $700 home, but the opportunity was available only because of Carnegie's close relationship with Scott.<ref name="Nasaw_pg59_60"/><ref>''[[Andrew Carnegie#Biography|Autobiography]]'', p. 79.</ref> A few years later, he received a few shares in [[Theodore Tuttle Woodruff]]'s sleeping car company as a reward for holding shares that Woodruff had given to Scott and Thomson, as a payoff. Reinvesting his returns in such inside investments in railroad-related industries (iron, bridges, and [[Track (rail transport)|rails]]), Carnegie slowly accumulated capital, the basis for his later success. Throughout his later career, he made use of his close connections to Thomson and Scott, as he established businesses that supplied rails and bridges to the railroad, offering the two men stakes in his enterprises.