Andrew Carnegie

Andrew Carnegie was born in Dunfermline, Scotland, the son of a handloom weaver put out of work by machines. In 1848 the family emigrated to Pittsburgh, where thirteen-year-old Andrew worked in a cotton mill as a bobbin boy for $1.20 a week. He became a telegraph messenger and operator, then assistant to a railroad superintendent, and invested his savings wisely. In the 1870s he turned to steel, adopting the Bessemer process and building huge, efficient mills. Carnegie Steel became the largest steel company in the world. In 1892 a strike at his Homestead works, while Carnegie was in Scotland, ended in a deadly battle between strikers and hired guards, and the union was broken. In 1901 he sold his company to J. P. Morgan for about 480 million dollars. In The Gospel of Wealth he had argued that the rich should use their fortunes for the public good during their lifetimes, and he spent his remaining years giving away some 350 million dollars, funding over 2,500 public libraries, Carnegie Hall, universities, scientific research and peace efforts. He died in 1919.

Andrew Carnegie is also an author in the library: author page and works.

Faith: Raised in a family of moderate Presbyterians who did not hold strictly orthodox views; as an adult he called the evolutionary philosopher Herbert Spencer his teacher. Source: Wikipedia