Andrew Carnegie: Industrial Philanthropist

Andrew Carnegie went from living in poverty to becoming one of the wealthiest businessmen of his time. Born in Scotland, in 1835, Carnegie lived in poverty for several years. In 1848, Carnegie and his family moved to America and settled near the city of Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. He started out making very little money working in factories and as a messenger boy, but worked up to jobs such as a telegraph operator and different positions in the Pennsylvania Railroad Company. He excelled at every job he worked at and made many wise investments. While working with railroads, Carnegie saw that steel would soon replace iron as the primary building material in the U.S. He then built a steel factory which soon was joined by others to make an empire. By the time Carnegie sold the Carnegie Steel Company to J.P. Morgan in 1900 for 480 million dollars, he was one of the richest men in the world. Before he died in 1919, Carnegie spent most of his money on charities including the donating of more than 50 million dollars worth of libraries and creating the Carnegie Corporation of New York, the largest charitable fund of its time. Andrew Carnegie is an interesting biography that will please anyone who wants to learn the details of Andrew Carnegie's life. Carnegie excelled at every job he worked at. As he provided office help to a factory owner named John Hay, he decided to change Hay's single-entry accounting system to a double-entry system, which he'd heard all great businesses had. He took a night class to learn accounting just to make this change. When Carnegie was working as a telegraph operator, he heard that some operators in other cities could take messages by ear. He worked hard and succeeded in becoming only the third operator who could translate Morse code in this way. While running his steel company, he put the profits back into the factories so that he always had the best equipment and could keep production costs low, even though the other partners wanted to spend the profits as they pleased. Throughout his life, Andrew Carnegie never forgot his family. The Carnegies were poor when they came to America. Andrew got a job when he was twelve working in a bobbin factory to support his family, even though it only paid one dollar and twenty cents a week. At age twelve, Carnegie promised his mother, Margaret that he would take her back to their hometown of Dunfermline in Scotland and that they would ride in a fine carriage and the whole town would see them. Thirty-three years later, once Andrew became a successful businessman, he fulfilled his promise to his mother. Carnegie felt that he should not get married while his mother was living and he kept to that moral. He was fifty-one years old when he finally married Louise Whitman in 1887. Carnegie performed many charitable acts before his death. One of his first acts of charity was when he donated a library to his hometown of Dunfermline in Scotland. During his lifetime he paid for 2

This nonfiction book is a rare gem. Not only does it detail the life of a fine man, but the reader wants to turn every page to see the next development in this fantastic tale. Andrew Carnegie was a hard worker and able to succeed with determination. His is a rags to riches story with love and devotion to his family. He was often in the right place at the right time to benefit from the knowledge of others. Not only did he receive wealth beyond his dreams, but is a prime example of sharing his good fortune with others. Libraries across the United States were built due to his generosity and interest.A wonderful book for ALL ages.The text and numerous pictures make this book hard to put down.