ANDREW CARNEGIE 1838-1919

           Andrew Carnegie destined to be the richest man in the world. He was born in 1838 in Dunfermline, Scotland. The Carnegies were a poor, radical, anti-royalist family. His fa­ther was a weaver, but the change from hand-loom to steam-loom weaving was disastrous, and although the family income was supple­mented by a wee shop kept by his wife the Carnegies on occasions knew real poverty.

           Andrew had scanty education, not going to school until be was eight, because his par­ents, felt that he should not go until he decided that he wanted to. Even in those early days Andrew was beginning to show his entrepreneurial spirit-when his father gave him a couple of rabbits he offered his pals the chance to have them named after them provided they fed them.

            A letter came from his mother’s sisters in America inviting the Carnegies to join them and so in May 1848, William Carnegie, Andrew’s father, sold his looms and his furniture borrowed twenty pounds, and with his wife and two sons sailed all the way to Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. The family had arrived in Pittsburgh after travelling 400 miles of sea voyages.

           The Carnegies were warmly welcomed by their relatives. But they lived in the poor­est quarter and Andrew had to find work. Through his father, who got a job in the cotton mill who employed only immigrant Scotsmen, Andrew got a job as a “bobbin boy” at $1.20 a week. The owner of the mill was a good businessman but not a good writ­er. Andrew was, and he was also good at figures and when the paper work came in, Andrew helped him out. Soon he was taken off the shop floor to become a clerk. He attended evening classes and got a job as a message boy in a telegraph office. In his spare time he read alot.

            He was very bright. Soon he was relieving telegraph operators and after three years he had a regular job. He repaid the £20 debtback in Scotland. His mother was always behind him, encouraging and urging him on. She remained a powerful influence all the days of her life.

             Businessmen praised his prowess, and when the Philadelphia to Pittsburgh railway line opened, the newly appointed superintend­ent, Thomas Scott, appointed Andrew, aged 16, his personal operator. Andrew, thrived in the job and when Scott was absent from the office on business, Andrew took deci­sions, even anticipating a strike and avert­ing it by sacking the leaders. Here was a foretaste of his future attitude to strikes.

           With the money that he earned he bought shares in the Railway Company and in the newly-developing sleeping-car carriages. At the age of 24, he succeeded Scott as super­intendent. (at $1,500 a year).

           Scott was now organizing railways for Ab­raham Lincoln and he summoned young Carnegie to Washington to assist him. When that job was completed Andrew returned to his job with the railways at $2,400 a year. Almost in passing he made a few millions dollars by investing in the Drake Oil Well discovered in Pennsylvania, but that was not where his main interest lay. He was hooked on railways, and through railways, on steel. As the age of 30 he resigned his post as superintendent, and was soon arranging telegraphy for the new Pullman Car Company and building bridges, deducing that if railways were to succeed, America needed bridges. He was also busier than ever buying and selling shares. He had become very wealthy. Early bridges were made of wood, but Carnegie realizing that they would not carry the heavy locomotives and carriages that were developing, moved in, bought the Keystone Bridge Company, and created the Union Iron Mills.

          More and more of his time was now devoted to the manufacture of iron and when Henry Bessemer* in England in 1856 developed his process for making steel from pig-iron, Carnegie realized that the world was enter­ing the Steel Age.

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*Bessemer, Henry (1813-1898) - British engineer and inven­tor who developed a method of converting molten pig-iron into steel in 1856.

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             He built a massive steel mill in Pittsburgh and during the Depres­sion he bought up cheaply, all the iron, low in phosphorous, that he could lay his hands on. He was ready for the boom when it came and instead of paying his employed high wages, he encouraged them to take shares in the company, always keeping 55% to him­self so that he had total control. Construc­tion costs never worried him it was opera­tional costs that mattered - and that was one of the reasons for his success. That and returning only a small profit to sharehold­ers - he kept dividends low, ploughing prof­its back into the Company, buying and ex­panding in recession - became recession don’t last. He looked on recession as a time of opportunity. He made his brother Tom Chairman and by 1880 Carnegie Bros, and Company Ltd was making $2 million a year profit.

              Carnegie visited Scotland with his mother. In Dufermline he donated a swimming bath to the town, and his mother opened there the first library that he gave outside the USA. Carnegie was emotionally deeply attacked to his mother, and determined that she should have all the good things in life that had been denied her as a young woman. He also loved his native country and the town of his birth. He was really a remarkably emotional men.

               In 1886, Carnegie married Louise Whitfield. Immediately after the wedding they sailed to Scotland. From the first Louise fell in love with Scotland and for the next ten years they spent the six summer months here when their daughter Margaret was born in 1897. Carnegie threw himself into British poli­tics, becoming a friend of Gladstone* and a supporter of the Liberal Party.

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*Gladstone, William Ewart (1809-1898) - British liberal poli­tician, four times prime minister.

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               He bought up seven daily, and ten weekly newspapers, expressing his news through them. He was anti-monarchist, pro-Republican, anti-House of Lords, anti-imperialist, pro-Home Rule* for Ireland.

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*Home Rule - movement to repeal the Act of Union 1801 that joined Ireland to Britain and establish an Irish parliament responsible for internal affairs.

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               He roused the unemployed, the miners, and the mill-hands to action; he supported strikes which was curious con­sidering his later actions when paced with strike-action at his own works. He consid­ered becoming a Member of Parliament, but thought the America a system “perfect” he was called the “Star Spangled Scotchman”.

               He was steadily becoming richer and he was pouring out money in new machinery and plant. Capital costs did not worry Carne­gie; but he worried about operational costs. When railway companies in the USA would not give him lower freight charges he threat­ened to build railways for business. The companies lowered the charges. For his steel words he bought his own ire-ore fields.

              But one mayor error was made it was fatal for his reputation. There was a strike at one of his steel works at a time when Carn­egie was in Scotland and his manager brought in the “Pinkerton National Defec­tive Agency” to break it.

              This was an extraordinary organization started up in the USA by Allan Pinkerton a young man of 23, who had emigrated from Glasgow in 1842. He built up a team of de­tectives who were available for hire. One of their great coups was the capture of the key men involved in the robbery of 700,000 from the Adam Express Company in 1866. The most notable success was the foiling of a plot to assassinate President-elect Abra­ham Lincoln. One of their mayor ways of operating was to infiltrate the organizations that they were investigating. ( years later, in 1901, he sold out all his interests in Carn­egie steel to the financier J. Pierpoint Mor­gan* to $480 million.

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*Morgan, J(ohn) P(ierpont) (l837-1913) - U.S. Financier and investment banker.

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             Carnegie became one of the richest men in the world. At the age of 63, he had time to enjoy golf, becoming quite a fanatic.

             But he did more than that. He proceeded to give all of his money away because he thought that it was a rich man’s duty to the community to do so. Giving money away he considered much more difficult than mak­ing it. But he tried.

             He strongly supported the idea of a union between the USA and Canada. When the USA took over the Philippine Islands from Spain he offered to buy them from the US President and set them free. This was the one of his unsuccessful ventures.

             Carnegie donated 2811 public libraries of which 1946 were located in the USA, 660 in Britain, 156 in Canada, 23 in New Zea­land, 11 in South Africa, 6 in British West Indies, 4 in Australia, and one each in Sey­chelles, Mauritius and Fiji. He gave build­ings, not books; these had to be suffered by its local authority. He loved opening librar­ies particularly in Britain where he usually got the Freedom of the Town*, which he also loved.

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* Freedom of the Town - honour bestowed on distinguished people by a city or borough in the UK and other countries.

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                In all he collected 57 Freedoms. He liked to donate church organs too-more than 7689 of them costing $6,5 million of which over 1000 were in Scotland.

               Nearly $300 million went to education. No wonder his friend Mark Twain nearly always referred to him as “St Andrew”. In 1901 he set up the Carnegie Trust for the Universi­ties of Scotland, with a grant of $10 mil­lion, half of which to encourage developments in science which he felt was being neglected, medicine, and the Arts; the other half was to play the University fees of students of Scottish birth or extraction. He arranged that the Principles of Scottish Universities should meet annually at his Skibo Castle in Suther­land, which he had purchased for $85,000 and spent £1 million renovating. He did not forget his old town, creating its “Dunferm­line Trust”, funded to the tune of $4 million to bring “sweetness and light” to the town. He had little time for Oxford and Cambridge believing that they got too much money an­yhow. But he was happy to accept an Honor­ary degree from Oxford, and one from St Andrews where be was twice elected Rector by the students.

              In Washington DC he built an Institute to further knowledge for all the universities, and endowed it with $1 million, thus ensur­ing an annual income of $0.5 million. In it he established Departments of Evolution, Marine Biology, History, Economics and Sociology. He set up a $10 million pension fund. But there were strings; the universi­ties and colleges would have to meet cer­tain criteria - they must be non-sectarian and non-denominational and must have ap­propriate entrance requirements. This rev­olutionized American education, not only at college and university level-they raised their entrance requirements and many did away with discrimination - but also at school level where they raised their standards to meet country requirements.

             He established a “Hero Fund Trust” to award gold silver, or bronze medals, plus a pension, to people who were injured, or their families if they were killed in an endeavour to reward the saving of lives in peaceful pursuits.

              By 1910, Carnegie had given away $179 mil­lion. By 1913, it had risen to $332 million. International peace had become one of his objectives. He built Temples of Peace costing $25.5 million.

              He was increasingly drawn to the idea of a coalition of the Great Powers - the USA, Great Britain, Germany, Russia, and France to police the world. The outbreak of the war in 1914 was a sore blow to him, but he later supported America’s entry in 1917 as a quick way to bring about peace.

              He fell ill with pneumonia and died aged 84 at Lenox, Massachusetts, on 11th August, 1919. He was buried at Sleepy Hollow, North Tarrytown, N. Y. where his grave is marked by a Celtic Cross cut out from stone quar­ried hear Skibo.

              He had given away $350,695,650. He left $30 million in his will of which $20 mil­lion went to the Carnegie Corporation in New York of the remaining $10 million, $4 million was set aside for pensions of $5-10 thousand for Dunfernline relatives and old friends, including Mrs Theodore Roosevelt. The remaining millions were di­vided among a number of Institutes. Hehad already made provision for his wife and daughters.

              Thus Andrew Carnegie paid back his debt to mankind.