Andrew Carnegie

He was born in a one-room weaver's cottage in Dunfermline that served as parlor, kitchen and bedroom. His father William had looms and a damask trade until steam-powered mills took both, and his mother Margaret became the household's earner, selling potted meats from a sweetie shop. The family borrowed passage money from an uncle and reached Allegheny, Pennsylvania in 1848. Carnegie was 12. He changed spools in a cotton mill for one dollar and 20 cents a week, fired a boiler in a bobbin factory, then carried telegrams. A Colonel James Anderson opened his personal library of 400 volumes to working boys on Saturday nights, and Carnegie borrowed from it constantly. Everything he did with his money later ran back through that room.

He learned to read telegraph signals by ear, caught the notice of Thomas A. Scott, and at 24 was running the Pennsylvania Railroad's Western Division. His mother mortgaged the family house so he could buy into Adams Express. From there came sleeping cars, oil, bridges, bonds and finally steel, consolidated into the Carnegie Steel Company in 1892 and sold nine years later for 303,450,000 dollars. BriefHistory has that record and what the mills cost the men inside them. What follows is the other half of the life, the half he spent trying to give it away.

He would not marry while his mother was alive. He was 51 when he married Louise Whitfield in April 1887 and 61 when their only child was born. The energy went instead into a project that failed completely. Carnegie hated empire. In 1898 he offered 20 million dollars of his own money so that Filipinos could buy their independence from the United States, and he became vice president of the American Anti-Imperialist League after coming close to backing William Jennings Bryan against McKinley. He paid for the Peace Palace at The Hague and endowed the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace with 10 million dollars in 1910. In 1913 he wrote that the end of war was as certain to come as day follows night. The next year Europe went to war.

He died of bronchial pneumonia on August 11, 1919 at Shadow Brook, his estate in Lenox, Massachusetts, and was buried at Sleepy Hollow. The will made the arithmetic public: 125 million dollars to the Carnegie Corporation of New York, 60 million to library buildings, 29 million to the Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching, 22 million each to the Pittsburgh institute and the Washington institution, 10 million apiece to the hero funds, the peace endowment, the Scottish universities and the United Kingdom trust. He also spent 25,000 dollars a year on a Simplified Spelling Board that persuaded no one. The name is still on the buildings, and the argument over whether the buildings settle the account has never closed.

Andrew Carnegie's life against the full span of the corpus.

• An American Four-in-Hand in Britain book
  The first of three travel books 1883
• Triumphant Democracy book
  The cover showed an upended crown and a broken scepter, and Britain took offense 1886
• Wealth article
  Printed in the North American Review. Gladstone had it reprinted in London 1889
• Carnegie Steel Company company
  Mills, furnaces, coke works, ore fields and a railway folded into one firm 1892
• Carnegie Endowment for International Peace company
  Ten million dollars aimed at abolishing war 1910
• Carnegie Corporation of New York company
  Created because he could not give the money away fast enough by hand 1911

• 1848 aged ~13 Reaches Allegheny, Pennsylvania at 12 and goes to work as a bobbin boy The family had borrowed the passage money from his uncle George Lauder Sr.
• 1853 aged ~18 Hired by Thomas A. Scott at the Pennsylvania Railroad for four dollars a week
• December 1, 1859 aged 24 Becomes superintendent of the railroad's Western Division at 24 He hired his 16-year-old brother Tom as his secretary and telegraph operator.
• 1883 aged ~48 Buys the Homestead Steel Works and its coal, ore, railway and lake steamers
• April 22, 1887 aged 51 Marries Louise Whitfield at 51 He had refused to marry in his mother's lifetime.
• 1898 aged ~63 Offers 20 million dollars so the Philippines can buy its independence Nothing came of it. He was elected vice president of the Anti-Imperialist League instead.
• March 2, 1901 aged 65 U.S. Steel is capitalized and the sale of his company completes His share came to 225.64 million dollars, paid in 50-year gold bonds.
• 1910 aged ~75 Endows the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace
• August 11, 1919 aged 83 Dies of bronchial pneumonia at Shadow Brook in Lenox, Massachusetts He had given away 350,695,653 dollars.

• Mark Twain 1835–1910
  Author of The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, often called the father of American literature. friend
• William Jennings Bryan 1860–1925
  Three-time Democratic nominee and orator who made monetary reform, popular democracy, and moral politics central national issues. nearly endorsed
• William McKinley 1843–1901
  Twenty-fifth president who led the Spanish-American War and overseas expansion before being assassinated. lobbied
• Theodore Roosevelt 1858–1919
  26th President known for progressive reforms, conservation efforts, and assertive foreign policy. corresponded with
• Grover Cleveland 1837–1908
  Only president elected to nonconsecutive terms who championed limited government and the gold standard. fellow anti-imperialist