History is the key component to seeing how the United States of America got to where it is at today. The United States has long been a land filled with dreamers looking for opportunities such as employment and economic stability to fulfill their pursuit of happiness. Today we take advantage of all of our gadgets and technological advancements. If it were not for people in the past working to invent bigger and better ideas, we would not be where we are today. Four men have become the most famous tycoons or entrepreneurs of their time that formed and shaped the American economy. John D. Rockefeller, Andrew Carnegie, Jay Gould, and J.P. Morgan started with nothing and worked their way up to transform America with their entrepreneur ideas and inventions that helped to shape the American economy that we have grown to understand today. Rockefeller a oil industry businessman, Carnegie a self made steel tycoon, Gould a railroad developer, and …show more content…
All his life he knew that he did not want to be a farmer. When his father discovered that Jay would not be taking over the family farm his father registered him in highschool and left him there with only a bag of clothes and 50 cents. He quickly found a job as a bookkeeper and grew fond of surveying. “Gould’s breakthrough opportunity came in 1856 when he was twenty, in the person of Zadock Pratt.” (Morris, 2005 p.22). This gave Gould the opportunity to lead a group of his own men into the woods and show that he could do the job. Eventually, Gould became the sole shareholder of numerous railroads. He planned to keep adding more and more railroads onto his share, so he continued to expand westward. Stated earlier the railroads were the main source of transportation at this time. As the railroads were growing farther west, so was the American economy. Gould continued to extend the railroads west, which increased the area of his empire and increased the chances that his legacy would live