Andrew Carnegie

Andrew Carnegie was born on November 25, 1835, in Dunfermline, Scotland, the son of a handloom weaver whose livelihood was destroyed by the arrival of steam-powered looms.¹ The family emigrated to Allegheny, Pennsylvania, in 1848, when Carnegie was thirteen. He began work as a bobbin boy in a cotton factory, earning $1.20 per week.

Carnegie rose through the telegraph industry and the Pennsylvania Railroad before entering the steel business. By the 1890s, his Carnegie Steel Company was the largest steel producer in the world, and Carnegie was among the wealthiest individuals alive.² In 1901, he sold the company to J.P. Morgan for $480 million, equivalent to roughly $17 billion in today's currency. The merger created the United States Steel Corporation.

$480,000,000, Sale price of Carnegie Steel to J.P. Morgan in 1901

Carnegie's 1889 essay "The Gospel of Wealth," published in the North American Review, argued that wealthy individuals had a moral obligation to distribute their fortunes for the public good during their lifetimes.³ He funded the construction of more than 2,500 public libraries worldwide, established the Carnegie Unit system for measuring educational credit, and founded institutions including Carnegie Mellon University and the Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching.

His labor record was more contested. The Homestead Strike of 1892, in which Pinkerton guards clashed with steel workers at Carnegie's Homestead plant near Pittsburgh, left ten dead and became one of the most violent labor disputes in American history.⁴ Carnegie was in Scotland at the time and left the confrontation to his business partner, Henry Clay Frick. He gave away approximately $350 million before his death on August 11, 1919, in Lenox, Massachusetts.

Timeline

• 1848, Carnegie emigrates from Scotland to Pennsylvania at age thirteen.
• 1889, Carnegie publishes "The Gospel of Wealth" in the North American Review.
• 1901, Carnegie Steel is sold to J.P. Morgan for $480 million, creating U.S. Steel.
• 1892, The Homestead Strike at Carnegie's steel plant leaves ten dead.

Endnotes

1. David Nasaw, Andrew Carnegie (New York: Penguin Press, 2006).
2. David Nasaw, Andrew Carnegie (New York: Penguin Press, 2006).
3. Andrew Carnegie, "Wealth," North American Review 148, no. 391 (June 1889).
4. Paul Krause, The Battle for Homestead, 1880-1892 (Pittsburgh: University of Pittsburgh Press, 1992).