Carnegie, Andrew
Record Information
Source: Library of Congress. Prints and Photographs Division.
Record Type: Photograph or Illustration
Date: b. 1835–d. 1919
Description:
Now known chiefly for his philanthropy, Andrew Carnegie built one of the 19th century's largest
fortunes by investing in steel production, which was essential for the rapid growth of railroads and
manufacturing in the United States. After selling his business to U.S. Steel in 1901, Carnegie spent
the remainder of his life as a philanthropist, giving away millions of dollars to universities, libraries,
hospitals, parks, and churches.
Born in Dunfermline, Scotland, on November 25, 1835, industrialist and
philanthropist Andrew Carnegie was the son of a handloom weaver who had married
into a prominent radical family active in the Chartist movement, which advocated
sweeping parliamentary reform, and harbored antimonarchial republican views. Steampowered looms soon impoverished the family, and upon the insistence of
Margaret, Carnegie's strong-minded mother, they migrated to Allegheny City (now
Pittsburgh's North Side), Pennsylvania, where Carnegie, at 12 years of age, got his first
job as a $1.20-a-week bobbin boy in a cotton textile factory. Despite living in a
slum, Carnegie reveled in the political equality and economic opportunity of his adopted
country. With only four years of schooling, Carnegie took advantage of the practice of
Colonel James Anderson, founder of the James Anderson Library Institute of Allegheny
City, of allowing working boys to use his large personal library free of charge. On the
lookout for better jobs, Carnegie tended a steam engine; delivered telegrams; became a
telegraph operator; and, as one of the first to take messages by ear, had the good luck to
be discovered by Thomas A. Scott, head of the western division of the Pennsylvania
Railroad, who hired him as his telegrapher and secretary at $35 a month. Scott
made Carnegie his protégé, tutoring him on investments. When Scott became the
railroad's general superintendent in 1859, Carnegie became superintendent of the
western division. By 1865 Carnegie had so expanded his investments that he left the
railroad to manage them.
His most interesting venture was the Keystone Bridge Company, which
specialized in building railroad bridges, the most famous of which is the James B.
Eads Bridge over the Mississippi at St. Louis. To secure iron beams for
Keystone, Carnegie in 1864 created the Cyclops Iron Company, and the following year
he forced a competitor to merge and form Union Mills. The insistence by Eads that
Keystone supply steel rather than iron for his bridge and the preference of railroads for
British steel rails made by the Bessemer process to American iron rails led Carnegie in
1872 to commence building the largest Bessemer plant in the United States. Within a
decade, Carnegie headed the incredibly efficient Carnegie Steel Company and
dominated the steel industry. The company was a partnership, not a corporation,
with Carnegie owning more than half of it and exercising complete control, while his
partners owned a small percentage and worked extremely hard to cut production
costs. Carnegie rewarded efficiency, eliminating inefficient managers, destroying labor
unions, installing the latest machines, and adopting new technology to maintain a
competitive edge. He also cut costs by expanding vertically, acquiring iron mines, coal
fields (for coke), and steamships and a railroad to transport iron ore from the Great
Lakes to the Pittsburgh district.
Carnegie's mixed heritage of his father's radical idealism and his mother's
aggressive, acquisitive realism (honed by the family's struggle to survive) account for his
complex, contradictory nature. His mother's spirit dominated his business career, but
his father's generous, humane spirit was not eradicated. It surfaced in 1886 when, in a
magazine article, Carnegie recognized labor's right to organize; but in 1892 he was his
mother's boy when he ordered his partner Henry Clay Frick to break the Amalgamated
Association of Iron and Steel Workers, thus provoking the bloody Homestead Strike.
While engaged in his relentless pursuit of profits, Carnegie feared that the accumulation
of wealth was a form of idolatry, but in 1889 he rationalized his wealth by espousing the
idea of stewardship in his article "The Gospel of Wealth." He argued that those who had
the talent to acquire a fortune were best equipped to distribute it most beneficially for
society. In 1901 Carnegie sold his company to U.S. Steel for $480 million (his own share
was $225 million), which allowed him to engage full time in philanthropy.
An avid reader from childhood, he donated 2,811 buildings for public libraries upon the
condition that community taxes would maintain the buildings and purchase books. He
provided pensions for Carnegie Steel workers and also for college teachers. Carnegiewas
an anti-imperialist and an advocate of peace, and he created the CarnegieEndowment
for International Peace. He also built the Pan-American Union Building in Washington,
D.C., the Central American Court of Justice in Costa Rica (to arbitrate disputes), and the
Hague Peace Palace in the Netherlands to house the World Court. Since so much of his
fortune was made in Pittsburgh, he focused many of his philanthropic efforts there,
forming the Carnegie Institute, which supported a concert hall, art museum, and library.
He also supported Pittsburgh's Carnegie Institute of Technology. Finally, he established
the Carnegie Corporation of New York to administer what was left of his
fortune. Carnegie's optimistic hopes for the arbitration of disputes and peace were
dashed in 1914 by the outbreak of World War I, which left him badly shaken. He died on
August 11, 1919, at his vacation home in Lenox, Massachusetts.
Further Information/ References
Abraham S. Eisenstadt, Carnegie's Model Republic: Triumphant Democracy and the
British-American Relationship (Albany: State University of New York Press, 2007)
David Nasaw, Andrew Carnegie (New York: Penguin Press, 2006)
Joseph Frazier Wall, Andrew Carnegie (New York: Oxford University Press, 1970).