During the great Civil War Carnegie had been put in charge of the government telegraph and had done well the important work which fell to him. But with the close of the war and the beginning of the period of reconstruction, he saw a greater field for the exercise of his business abilities. Iron was in great demand. Carnegie had already been active in the foundation of a mill for the production of structural iron; for three years the company had stood on the brink of failure; but Carnegie was not a “quitter,” and he hung on to his faith. Now, with his brother and several other partners, he formed the Union Iron Mills. The profits were enormous. Vast railroad development throughout the country required rails and structural iron. Steel rails were worth from $90 to $100 a ton. The manufacture of steel seemed to offer even greater prospects than iron. In 1868 Carnegie visited England. In the early days of the nineteenth century England controlled the iron business of the world; and when Carnegie made his first trip abroad, there were fifty-nine Bessemer Steel plants in Europe and only three in the United States. To-day, the United States produces over two fifths of all the steel and iron in the world, and the beginning of this great American industry can be found in the enterprise of the son of the poor Scotch weaver. Carnegie had faith in steel. By the Bessemer process steel of high quality was economically produced by decarbonizing cast iron by forcing a blast of air through the mass of metal when it is in a molten condition. Carnegie saw the merits of this process, brought the idea home with him, and adopted it in his mills. The vindication of his faith was immediate. In an incredibly short time he had obtained control of seven great plants in the vicinity of Pittsburgh: the Homestead, the Edgar Thomson, the Duquesne Steel Works and Furnaces, the Lucy Furnaces, the Keystone Bridge Works, the Upper and Lower Union Rolling Mills. In the town to which he had come a poor lad from a foreign land, Carnegie was now assuming the proportions of a giant of industry. Nothing was too good or too costly for the perfecting of the industry. “Carnegie was the first steelmaker in any country who flung good machinery on the scrap heap because something better had been invented. He was the first to employ a salaried chemist, and to appreciate science in its relation to manufacturing. In his early days he was the biggest borrower in Pennsylvania; and when the profits grew large they were poured back, to fertilize the soil from whence they grew.... So it is clear that, primarily, the aim of Andrew Carnegie was not to make large dividends or to sell stock, but to establish a solid and enduring industrial structure. First of all, he was a business builder; and the present unequaled prosperity in our iron and steel trade is largely due to the fact that American steel-makers have adopted the Carnegie policy of ranking improvements above dividends.”