The Tycoons

Lincoln especially enjoyed patent cases, and once said that the most important discoveries advancing civilization were "writing, ... printing, the discovery of America, and the introduction of Patent Laws." It was typical of him that in a case involving reaper patents, he came armed with models of the machines, and gathered the jurors around on their knees to point out the critical details.

Carnegie was no technologist, but rather a masterful consumer of invention. His plants were always the biggest, the most automated, the most focused on pushing prices down. He had the simplest of business mantras: cut costs, take share, gain scale. Profits would take care of themselves.