Early life , Scotland Andrew Carnegie was born to William Carnegie and Margaret (Morrison) Carnegie in Dunfermline, Scotland, in a typical weaver's cottage with only one main room. It consisted of half the ground floor, which was shared with the neighboring weaver's family. The main room served as a living room, dining room and bedroom. Carnegie's maternal uncle, Scottish political leader
George Lauder Sr., deeply influenced him as a boy by introducing him to
Robert Burns' writings and historical Scottish heroes such as
Robert the Bruce,
William Wallace, and
Rob Roy. Lauder's son, also named
George Lauder, grew up with Carnegie and later became his business partner in the United States. When Carnegie was 12, his father had fallen on tough times as a handloom weaver. Making matters worse, the country was in starvation. His mother helped support the family by assisting her brother and by selling potted meats at her "sweetie shop", becoming the primary breadwinner. and move to the United States in 1848 for the prospect of a better life. They headed to
Allegheny, Pennsylvania, where they heard there was a demand for workers. Carnegie's emigration to America was his second journey outside Dunfermline. The first was a family outing to
Edinburgh to see
Queen Victoria. In September 1848, Carnegie and his family arrived in Allegheny. Carnegie's father struggled to sell his product on his own. Eventually, the father and son both received job offers at Anchor Cotton Mills, a Scottish-owned facility. Carnegie's first job in 1848 was as a
bobbin boy, changing spools of thread in a cotton mill 12 hours a day, 6 days a week in a Pittsburgh cotton factory. His starting wage was $1.20 per week (). His father soon quit his position at the cotton mill, returning to his loom, and was again removed as a substantial breadwinner. But Carnegie attracted the attention of John Hay, a Scottish manufacturer of bobbins, who offered him a job for $2.00 per week (). In his autobiography, Carnegie writes about the hardships he had to endure with this new job:
Telegraph In 1849, Carnegie became a telegraph messenger boy in the Pittsburgh Office of the Ohio Telegraph Company, following the recommendation of his uncle. He was a hard worker and would memorize all of the locations of Pittsburgh's businesses and the faces of important men. He made many connections this way. He also paid close attention to his work and quickly learned to distinguish the different sounds the incoming telegraph signals produced. He developed the ability to translate signals by ear, without using the paper slip. Within a year he was promoted to an operator. Carnegie's education and passion for reading were given a boost by
Colonel James Anderson, who opened his personal library of 400 volumes to working boys each Saturday night. Carnegie was a consistent borrower and a "
self-made man" in both his economic development and his intellectual and cultural development. He was so grateful to Colonel Anderson for the use of his library that he "resolved, if ever wealth came to me, [to see to it] that other poor boys might receive opportunities similar to those for which we were indebted to the nobleman".
Railroads Starting in 1853, when Carnegie was around 18 years old,
Thomas A. Scott of the
Pennsylvania Railroad employed him as a secretary/telegraph operator at a salary of $4.00 per week ($ by ). Carnegie accepted the job with the railroad as he saw more prospects for career growth and experience there than with the telegraph company. On December 1, 1859, Carnegie officially became superintendent of the Western Division. He hired his sixteen-year-old brother Tom to be his personal secretary and telegraph operator. Carnegie also hired his cousin, Maria Hogan, who became the first female telegraph operator in the country. As superintendent, Carnegie made a salary of $1500 a year ($ by inflation). Scott also helped him with his first investments. Many of these were part of the corruption indulged in by Scott and the president of the Pennsylvania Railroad,
John Edgar Thomson, which consisted of inside trading in companies with which the railroad did business, or payoffs made by contracting parties "as part of a
quid pro quo". In 1855, Scott made it possible for Carnegie to invest $500 in the
Adams Express Company, which contracted with the Pennsylvania to carry its messengers. The money was secured by his mother's placing of a $600 mortgage on the family's $700 home, but the opportunity was available only because of Carnegie's close relationship with Scott. A few years later, he received a few shares in
Theodore Tuttle Woodruff's sleeping car company as a reward for holding shares that Woodruff had given to Scott and Thomson, as a payoff. Reinvesting his returns in such inside investments in railroad-related industries (iron, bridges, and
rails), Carnegie slowly accumulated capital, the basis for his later success. Throughout his later career, he made use of his close connections to Thomson and Scott, as he established businesses that supplied rails and bridges to the railroad, offering the two men stakes in his enterprises.
1860–1865: American Civil War Before the
American Civil War, Carnegie arranged a merger between Woodruff's company and that of
George Pullman, the inventor of the
sleeping car for
first-class travel, which facilitated business travel at distances over . The investment proved a success and a source of profit for Woodruff and Carnegie. The young Carnegie continued to work for Pennsylvania's Tom Scott and introduced several improvements in the service. In the spring of 1861, Carnegie joined the
U.S. Military Telegraph Corps and was appointed by Scott, who was now Assistant Secretary of War in charge of military transportation, as Superintendent of the Military Railways and the Union Government's telegraph lines in the East. Carnegie helped open the rail lines into Washington D.C. that the rebels had cut; he rode the locomotive pulling the first brigade of Union troops to reach Washington D.C. Following the defeat of Union forces at
Bull Run, he personally supervised the transportation of the defeated forces. Under his organization, the telegraph service rendered efficient service to the Union cause and significantly assisted in the eventual victory. Carnegie later joked that he was "the first casualty of the war" when he gained a scar on his cheek from freeing a trapped telegraph wire. The defeat of the Confederacy required vast supplies of
munitions, with railroads and telegraph lines being required to deliver them efficiently. The war demonstrated how integral the industries were to Union success.
Keystone Bridge Company , opened in 1874 using Carnegie steel In 1864, Carnegie was one of the early investors in the Columbia Oil Company in
Venango County, Pennsylvania. In one year, the firm yielded over $1 million in cash dividends, and petroleum from oil wells on the property sold profitably. The demand for iron products, such as armor for gunboats, cannons, and shells, as well as a hundred other industrial products, made Pittsburgh a center of wartime production. Carnegie worked with others in establishing a steel
rolling mill, and steel production and control of industry became the source of his fortune. Carnegie had some investments in the iron industry before the war. After the war, Carnegie left the railroads to devote his energies to the ironworks trade. Carnegie worked to develop several ironworks, eventually forming the Keystone Bridge Works and the Union Ironworks, in Pittsburgh. Although he had left the Pennsylvania Railroad Company, he remained connected to its management, namely Thomas A. Scott and J. Edgar Thomson. He used his connection to the two men to acquire contracts for his
Keystone Bridge Company and the rails produced by his
ironworks. He also gave stock in his businesses to Scott and Thomson, and the Pennsylvania was his best customer. When he built his first steel plant, he made a point of naming it after Thomson. As well as having good business sense, Carnegie possessed charm and literary knowledge. He was invited to many important social functions, which Carnegie exploited to his advantage. Carnegie, through Keystone, supplied the steel for and owned shares in the landmark
Eads Bridge project across the
Mississippi River at
St. Louis, Missouri (completed 1874). This project was an important proof-of-concept for steel technology, which marked the opening of a new steel market. Carnegie believed in using his fortune for others and doing more than making money. In 1868, at age 33, he wrote:
Industrialist 1875–1900: Steel empire Carnegie made his fortune in the steel industry, controlling the most extensive integrated iron and steel operations ever owned by an individual in the United States. One of his two great innovations was in the cheap and efficient mass production of steel by adopting and adapting the
Bessemer process, which allowed the high carbon content of
pig iron to be burnt away in a controlled and rapid way during
steel production. Steel prices dropped as a result, and Bessemer steel was rapidly adopted for rails; however, it was not suitable for buildings and bridges. The second was in his
vertical integration of all suppliers of raw materials. In 1883, Carnegie bought the rival
Homestead Steel Works, which included an extensive plant served by tributary coal and iron fields, a railway, and a line of
lake steamships. Carnegie's success was also due to his relationship with the railroad industries, which not only relied on steel for track, but were also making money from steel transport. The steel and railroad barons worked closely to negotiate prices instead of allowing free-market competition. Besides Carnegie's market manipulation, United States trade tariffs were also working in favor of the steel industry. Carnegie spent energy and resources lobbying Congress for a continuation of favorable tariffs from which he earned millions of dollars a year. Carnegie tried to keep this information concealed, but legal documents released in 1900, during proceedings with the ex-chairman of Carnegie Steel,
Henry Clay Frick, revealed how favorable the tariffs had been.
1901: U.S. Steel In 1901, Carnegie was 65 years of age and considering retirement. He reformed his enterprises into conventional
joint stock corporations as preparation for this.
John Pierpont Morgan was a banker and America's most important financial deal maker. He had observed how efficiently Carnegie produced profits. He envisioned an integrated steel industry that would cut costs, lower prices to consumers, produce in greater quantities and raise wages to workers. To this end, he needed to buy out Carnegie and several other major producers and integrate them into one company, thereby eliminating duplication and waste. He concluded negotiations on March 2, 1901, and formed the
United States Steel Corporation. It was the first corporation in the world with a market capitalization of over $1 billion. The buyout, secretly negotiated by
Charles M. Schwab (no relation to
Charles R. Schwab), was the largest such industrial takeover in United States history to date. The holdings were incorporated in the United States Steel Corporation, a trust organized by Morgan, and Carnegie retired from business.
Scholar and activist 1880–1900 Carnegie continued his business career; some of his literary intentions were fulfilled. He befriended the English poet
Matthew Arnold, the English philosopher
Herbert Spencer, and the American humorist
Mark Twain, as well as being in correspondence and acquaintance with most of the
U.S. Presidents, statesmen, and notable writers. Carnegie constructed commodious
swimming-baths for the people of his hometown in
Dunfermline in 1879. In the following year, Carnegie gave £8,000 for the establishment of a
Dunfermline Carnegie Library in Scotland. In 1884, he gave $50,000 to
Bellevue Hospital Medical College (now part of
New York University Medical Center) to create a
histological laboratory, now called the Carnegie Laboratory. In 1881, Carnegie took his family, including his 70-year-old mother, on a trip to the United Kingdom. They toured Scotland by coach and enjoyed several receptions en route. The highlight was a return to Dunfermline, where Carnegie's mother laid the foundation stone of a
Carnegie Library which he funded. Carnegie's criticism of British society did not mean dislike; on the contrary, one of Carnegie's ambitions was to act as a
catalyst for a close association between English-speaking peoples. To this end, in the early 1880s in partnership with
Samuel Storey, he purchased numerous newspapers in Britain, all of which were to advocate the abolition of the monarchy and the establishment of "the British Republic". Carnegie's charm, aided by his wealth, afforded him many British friends, including Prime Minister
William Ewart Gladstone. In 1886, Carnegie's younger brother Thomas died at age 43. While owning steel works, Carnegie had purchased at low cost the most valuable of the iron ore fields around
Lake Superior. Following his tour of the UK, he wrote about his experiences in a book entitled
An American Four-in-hand in Britain. In 1886, Carnegie wrote his most radical work to date, entitled
Triumphant Democracy. Liberal in its use of statistics to make its arguments, the book argued his view that the American republican system of government was superior to the British
monarchical system. It gave a highly favorable and idealized view of American progress and criticized the British royal family. The cover depicted an upended royal
crown and a broken scepter. The book created considerable controversy in the UK. The book made many Americans appreciate their country's economic progress and sold over 40,000 copies, mostly in the U.S. Although actively involved in running his many businesses, Carnegie had become a regular contributor to numerous magazines, most notably
The Nineteenth Century, under the editorship of
James Knowles, and the influential
North American Review, led by the editor
Lloyd Bryce. In 1889, Carnegie published "Wealth" in the June issue of the
North American Review. After reading it, Gladstone requested its publication in Britain, where it appeared as "The Gospel of Wealth" in
The Pall Mall Gazette. Carnegie argued that the life of a wealthy industrialist should comprise two parts. The first part was the gathering and the accumulation of wealth. The second part was for the subsequent distribution of this wealth to benevolent causes. Philanthropy was key to making life worthwhile. Carnegie was a well-regarded writer. He published three books on travel.
Anti-imperialism In the aftermath of the
Spanish–American War, the United States seemed poised to annex
Cuba,
Guam,
Puerto Rico and the
Philippines. Carnegie strongly opposed the idea of American colonies. He opposed the annexation of the Philippines almost to the point of supporting
William Jennings Bryan against McKinley in 1900. In 1898, Carnegie tried to arrange independence for the Philippines. As the conclusion of the Spanish–American War neared, the United States purchased the Philippines from Spain for $20 million. To counter what he perceived as
American imperialism, Carnegie personally offered $20 million to the Philippines so that the
Filipino people could purchase their independence from the United States. However, nothing came of the offer. In 1898 Carnegie joined the
American Anti-Imperialist League, in opposition to the U.S. annexation of the Philippines. Its membership included former presidents of the United States
Grover Cleveland and
Benjamin Harrison and literary figures such as
Mark Twain.
1901–1919: Philanthropist Carnegie spent his last years as a philanthropist. From 1901 forward, public attention was turned from the shrewd business acumen which had enabled Carnegie to accumulate such a fortune, to the public-spirited way in which he devoted himself to using it on philanthropic projects. He had written about his views on social subjects and the responsibilities of great wealth in
Triumphant Democracy (1886) and
Gospel of Wealth (1889). Carnegie devoted the rest of his life to providing capital for purposes of public interest and social and educational advancement. He saved letters of appreciation from those he helped in a desk drawer labeled "Gratitude and Sweet Words." He provided $25,000 a year to the movement for
spelling reform. His organization, the
Simplified Spelling Board, created the
Handbook of Simplified Spelling, which was written wholly in reformed spelling.
3,000 public libraries " for the London magazine
Vanity Fair, 1903 Among his many philanthropic efforts, the establishment of
public libraries throughout the United States, Britain, Canada, New Zealand, and mostly other English-speaking countries was especially prominent. In this special driving interest of his, Carnegie was inspired by meetings with philanthropist
Enoch Pratt (1808–1896). The
Enoch Pratt Free Library (1886) of
Baltimore, Maryland, impressed Carnegie deeply; he said, "Pratt was my guide and inspiration." Carnegie turned over management of the library project by 1908 to his staff, led by
James Bertram (1874–1934). The first
Carnegie Library opened in 1883 in Dunfermline. His method was to provide funds to build and equip the library, but only on the condition that the local authority matched that by providing the land and a budget for operation and maintenance. To secure local interest, in 1885, he gave $500,000 to
Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, for a public library; in 1886, he gave $250,000 to
Allegheny City, Pennsylvania, for a music hall and library; and he gave $250,000 to
Edinburgh for a free library. In total, Carnegie funded some 3,000 libraries, located in 47 U.S. states, and also in Canada, Britain, Ireland, Belgium, Serbia, France, Australia, New Zealand, South Africa, the
West Indies, and
Fiji. He also donated £50,000 to help set up the
University of Birmingham in 1899. As Van Slyck (1991) showed, during the last years of the 19th century, there was the increasing adoption of the idea that free libraries should be available to the American public. But the design of such libraries was the subject of prolonged and heated debate. On one hand, the library profession called for designs that supported efficiency in administration and operation; on the other, wealthy philanthropists favored buildings that reinforced the paternalistic metaphor and enhanced civic pride. Between 1886 and 1917, Carnegie reformed both library philanthropy and library design, encouraging a closer correspondence between the two. Carnegie's libraries also served as institutions of control. According to the historian
Richard White, many steelworkers employed by Carnegie "despised" his library in
Homestead, Pennsylvania. File:CarnegieLibraryPittsburghFrontEntrance.jpg|
Carnegie Library of Pittsburgh,
Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania File:Macomb Public Library.JPG|
Carnegie library,
Macomb, Illinois File:Edinburgh Central Library, George IV Bridge.JPG|
Edinburgh Central Library File:TPL Yorkville 2025-05-07.jpg|
Yorkville Library,
Ontario. File:Syracuse Carnegie Library.jpg|Carnegie Library at
Syracuse University, New York File:Carnegie library 002.jpg|Carnegie Library,
Moorreesburg, South Africa
Investing in education, science, pensions, civil heroism, music, and world peace In 1900, Carnegie gave $2 million to start the
Carnegie Institute of Technology (CIT) at Pittsburgh and the same amount in 1902 to create the
Carnegie Institution at Washington, D.C., to encourage research and discovery. He later contributed more to these and other schools. CIT is now known as
Carnegie Mellon University after it merged with the
Mellon Institute of Industrial Research. Carnegie also served on the Boards of
Cornell University and
Stevens Institute of Technology. In 1911, Carnegie became a sympathetic benefactor to
George Ellery Hale, who was trying to build the
Hooker Telescope at
Mount Wilson, and donated an additional ten million dollars to the
Carnegie Institution with the following suggestion to expedite the construction of the telescope: "I hope the work at Mount Wilson will be vigorously pushed, because I am so anxious to hear the expected results from it. I should like to be satisfied before I depart, that we are going to repay to the old land some part of the debt we owe them by revealing more clearly than ever to them the new heavens." The telescope saw
first light on November 2, 1917, with Carnegie still alive. , Scotland In 1901, in Scotland, he gave $10 million to establish the
Carnegie Trust for the Universities of Scotland. It was created by a deed that he signed on June 7, 1901, and it was incorporated by royal charter on August 21, 1902. The establishing gift of $10 million was then an unprecedented sum: at the time, total government assistance to all four Scottish universities was about £50,000 a year. The aim of the Trust was to improve and extend the opportunities for scientific research in the Scottish universities and to enable the deserving and qualified youth of Scotland to attend a university. He was subsequently elected
Lord Rector of
University of St. Andrews in December 1901, and formally installed as such in October 1902, serving until 1907. He also donated large sums of money to Dunfermline, the place of his birth. In addition to a library, Carnegie also bought the private estate which became
Pittencrieff Park and opened it to all members of the public, establishing the Carnegie Dunfermline Trust to benefit the people of Dunfermline. A statue of Carnegie was later built between 1913 and 1914 in the park as a commemoration for his creation of the park. Carnegie was a major patron of music. He was a founding financial backer of
Jeannette Thurber's
National Conservatory of Music of America in 1885. He built the music performing venue
Carnegie Hall in New York City; it opened in 1891 and remained in his family until 1925. His interest in music led him to fund the construction of 7,000 pipe organs in churches and temples, with no apparent preference for any religious denomination or sect. He gave a further $10 million in 1913 to endow the
Carnegie United Kingdom Trust, a grant-making foundation. He transferred to the trust the charge of all his existing and future benefactions, other than university benefactions in the United Kingdom. He gave the trustees a wide discretion, and they inaugurated a policy of financing rural library schemes rather than erecting library buildings, and of assisting the musical education of the people rather than granting organs to churches. (front row, center) in 1906 while visiting
Tuskegee Institute In 1901, Carnegie also established large pension funds for his former employees at Homestead and, in 1905, for American college professors. He had already given away $350,695,653 (approximately $6.9 billion in 2025 dollars) of his wealth. After his death, his last $30 million was given to foundations, charities, and to pensioners. He was buried at
Sleepy Hollow Cemetery in
Sleepy Hollow, New York. His
intentionally simple gravestone, in the form of the
Celtic cross, is located on the Arcadia Hebron plot of land at the corner of Summit Avenue and Dingle Road. Carnegie is buried only a few yards away from union organizer
Samuel Gompers, another important figure of industry in the
Gilded Age. ==Controversies==