Andrew Carnegie (1835-1919), American industrialist and
philanthropist, a founder of the iron and steel industry in the United States,
who is noted for his many charitable gifts, especially those founding public
libraries. At the age of 33, when he had an annual income of $50,000, Carnegie
wrote himself a note, “Beyond this never earn, make no effort to increase
fortune, but spend the surplus each year for benevolent purposes.” He did not
keep this resolution, but as his fortune grew so did his concern for using his
fortune to provide greater opportunity for all.
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II
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EARLY LIFE
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Carnegie was born in Dunfermline, Scotland, on
November 25, 1835. His father, William Carnegie, was a weaver who grew relatively
prosperous, with four looms and a number of apprentices. The family of Andrew’s
mother were outspoken opponents of privilege in all forms, and both of his
parents were active supporters of Chartism, a movement to gain political reform
for the benefit of the working classes. Andrew Carnegie’s political and social
ideals were formed in this unorthodox political environment.
With the rapid industrialization of the textile
industry in Britain, handloom weavers like William Carnegie suffered greatly.
In 1848 the family sold the last of their looms, borrowed 20 pounds from a
neighbor, and sailed for the United States. They settled in Allegheny,
Pennsylvania, a suburb of Pittsburgh, and at the age of 13 Andrew went to work
as a bobbin boy in a cotton mill, earning $1.20 per week.
Although William Carnegie failed to make a successful
adjustment to the new environment, his son experienced no such difficulties. He
was soon writing enthusiastic letters to friends in Dunfermline that in America
he had found the practical realization of all the Scottish Chartist’s dreams.
He was convinced that the United States had developed a perfect solution to
Europe’s long-standing political grievances, a conviction that never deserted
Carnegie.
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III
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DEVELOPMENT OF AN INDUSTRIALIST
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A year after obtaining his first job, Carnegie was
able to move out of the cotton factory, which he disliked intensely, to become
a messenger in a Pittsburgh telegraph office. Here he could meet important
people and take advantage of any business opportunity that might present
itself. From this moment on, his rise in the business life of Pittsburgh was
meteoric. He quickly taught himself telegraphy. He was then hired by the
Pennsylvania Railroad as private secretary and telegrapher for railroad
official Thomas Alexander Scott. His salary was $35 a month, and Carnegie
regarded his fortune as already made. Carnegie advanced by successive
promotions until he took over Scott’s job as superintendent of the Pittsburgh
division of the railroad, when Scott became general superintendent of the line.
In 1861, at the beginning of the American
Civil War, Carnegie served in the War Department under Scott, who was in charge
of military transportation and government telegraph service. Carnegie remained
with the Pennsylvania Railroad for 12 years, from 1853 to 1865, but long before
he left, his interests had expanded far beyond the railway office from which he
drew his modest salary. Despite his small income he took out a loan to buy into
a sleeping car company, which soon brought him a greater annual income than his
railroad salary. He also invested a small amount in an oil company in western
Pennsylvania. The handsome dividends he received from his oil investments
enabled him to go into the iron and steel business. In 1865 he helped form a
company to replace wooden railway bridges with iron bridges. At the same time
he became a partner in a small iron-forging company in Pittsburgh.
In 1873, on one of his frequent trips to
Great Britain, Carnegie met Henry Bessemer, inventor of the Bessemer process of
making steel, and he became convinced that the future of industry lay in steel.
He built a steel mill near Pittsburgh, and from this time on the Carnegie
empire was one of constant expansion. By 1899, when he consolidated his
interests in the Carnegie Steel Company, he controlled about 25 percent of
American iron and steel production. In 1901 Carnegie sold his company for $250
million to a syndicate formed by financier J. P. Morgan to organize the United
States Steel Corporation (see USX Corporation: History of U.S. Steel).
Carnegie then retired from business.
Carnegie always maintained that the secret of his
business success lay not in his own genius as a maker of steel, but in his
ability to select the proper person for the job to be done. He was one of the
first industrialists to hire scientists for research, and he suggested for his
own epitaph, “Here lies a man who was able to surround himself with men far
cleverer than himself.” But such a statement underestimates Carnegie’s own
genius in organization and the shrewdness of his business judgment. His faith
in the United States as a land of business opportunity never wavered, and much
of his financial success was due to his policy of expanding in periods of
depression. Carnegie also prided himself on his enlightened labor policy,
although his reputation for benevolence was publicly damaged by the violent
Homestead Strike of 1892.
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IV
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CARNEGIE THE PHILANTHROPIST
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Carnegie remained committed to many of the Chartist
ideals of his boyhood. In “The Gospel of Wealth,” first published in the North
American Review in 1899, Carnegie stated his doctrine concerning the
responsibility of the wealthy individual to society. Wealthy people, he
believed, should use the fortune they have earned to provide greater
opportunity for all and to increase knowledge of humankind and of the universe.
Carnegie began to practice his own doctrine in the
1880s with the building of libraries, the particular philanthropy with which
Carnegie’s name is especially associated. Beginning with the gift of his first
library to his hometown of Dunfermline in 1882, Carnegie provided funds for
more than 2,500 libraries in Britain and Ireland, the United States, and
Canada. The arrangement for all these gifts was the same: Carnegie provided the
funds for the building only after the municipal government had provided a site
for the building and passed an ordinance for the purchase of books and future
maintenance of the library.
During his lifetime Carnegie gave more than $350
million to various educational, cultural, and peace institutions, many of which
bear his name. The philanthropic foundations he established include the
Carnegie Dunfermline Trust, the Carnegie United Kingdom Trust, the Carnegie
Hero Fund Trust, Carnegie Institute of Technology (now Carnegie Mellon
University), the Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching, the
Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, and the largest of all, the
Carnegie Corporation of New York. Carnegie was honored throughout the world
during his lifetime.
In 1886 Carnegie married Louise Whitfield of New
York. Thereafter, Carnegie and his wife spent at least six months of each year
in Scotland. Soon after the birth of their only child, Margaret, the Carnegies
purchased a vast estate in northern Scotland and built the castle of Skibo.
Here each summer, Carnegie entertained the people who interested him most,
particularly those in the world of literature, science, and education.
In his last years Carnegie became convinced
that war was humanity’s greatest evil, and he devoted much of his time and
fortune toward the securing of international peace. He built the Pan-American Union
building in Washington, D.C., to promote peace in the Western Hemisphere and
donated funds for the construction of the Peace Palace (now the International
Court of Justice) in The Hague, Netherlands, to support international
arbitration. The outbreak of World War I in 1914 came as a tragic conclusion to
all of his hopes. He died in Lenox, Massachusetts, on August 11, 1919.
