Andrew Carnegie

Andrew Carnegie (1835-1919) was a Scottish-American industrialist, and founder of the iron and steel industry in the United States. After selling his steel interests to U.S. Steel in 1901, Carnegie became, at least for a while, the richest man in the world. He gave away his fortune to a series of philanthropies in America, Scotland and the British Empire, promoting libraries, higher education, and world peace. He opposed imperialism and was one of the most visible leaders of the Efficiency Movement in the Gilded Age and during the Progressive Movement was a major proponent of philanthropy through the "Gospel of Wealth."

Early career

Carnegie was born in Dunfermline, Scotland, on Nov. 25, 1835. His name is properly pronounced Car-nay-gie rather than the more common Carn-a-gie. His father, William Carnegie, was a hand-loom weaver and as a young man moved from the small settlement of Patiemuir to Dunfermline as that industry became more centralized. There, the father became a relatively prosperous weaver, with four looms and a number of apprentices, but he did not abandon the radical idealism of his forebears. They had been active in the Meal Riots of the late eighteenth century when workers protested the high price on grain supported by the Corn Laws. His radical proclivities were by no means lessened by his marriage to Margaret Morrison, daughter of Tom Morrison, a leader of Scottish Chartism, a movement to gain political reform for the benefit of the working classes. The Morrison family were outspoken opponents of privilege in all forms: the monarchy, the House of Lords, the Church of Scotland, private education, and the protective tariff on agricultural products.

Andrew grew up in this unorthodox political environment that formed his earliest political and social ideals. In Dunfermline, the ancient capital of Scotland, he received his first love for history and romantic patriotism, which he never lost. During these years of rapid industrialization of the textile trade throughout Great Britain, the hand-loom weavers of Scotland suffered greatly, their income dropping steadily. By 1848, William Carnegie had to admit to his family that there was no demand for his woven linens at any price. Selling their last remaining loom and borrowing twenty pounds from a neighbor, William and Margaret Carnegie, with Andrew and his younger brother Thomas, sailed from Glasgow for the United States in May 1848.

American years

The family settled in Allegheny, Pennsylvania, a suburb of Pittsburgh, and at the age of thirteen, young Andrew found his first job in a cotton factory as a bobbin-boy at $1.20 a week. William Carnegie failed to make a successful adjustment to this new environment so remote from his beloved Scotland and his looms, but his son experienced no such difficulties and became the chief earner. Andrew was soon writing enthusiastic letters back to his friends in Dunfermline that here in America he had found the practical realization of all the Scottish Chartist's dreams. He was convinced that the United States had developed a perfect solution to Europe's long-standing political grievances, a conviction that never deserted Carnegie.

A year after obtaining his first job. Carnegie was able to move out of the cotton factory, which he disliked intensely, to become a messenger for a local telegraph company. Here he could meet important people and take advantage of any business opportunity that might present itself. From this moment on, his rise in the business life of Pittsburgh was meteoric. He quickly taught himself the art of telegraphy. Thomas Scott, then superintendent of the Pittsburgh division of the Pennsylvania Railroad, hired Carnegie as private secretary and personal telegrapher at $35 a month, and Carnegie regarded his fortune as already made. So successful was he in this position that when Scott became general superintendent of the line, Carnegie inherited his job in Pittsburgh. In 1861, at the beginning of the Civil War, he went with Scott, then Assistant Secretary of War, to Washington to organize the military telegraph department.

Carnegie remained with the Pennsylvania Railroad for twelve years (1853-1865), but long before this, his interests had expanded far beyond the railway office from which he drew his modest salary. He bought into the Woodruff Sleeping Car Co. and introduced the first successful sleeping car on American railroads. In 1864, he invested a small amount in the Storey Farm in western Pennsylvania which paid handsome dividends in the first major oil development in this country. In 1865, he helped form the Keystone Bridge Co., a concern dedicated to replacing wooden railway bridges with iron. At the same time, he became a partner in a small iron forging company in Pittsburgh, the Kloman Co., and gave up his job with the Pennsylvania Railroad.

Building the steel industry

In the 36 years that followed his taking over the Kloman Co., Carnegie's career might well serve as a summary of the industrial development of the United States in this period. In 1873, on one of his frequent trips to Great Britain, he met Henry Bessemer, inventor of the "Bessemer process," and became convinced that the industrial future lay in steel. He built the J. Edgar Thomson Steel Mills near Pittsburgh, and from this moment on, the Carnegie empire was one of constant expansion. His key technical man was William Jones (1839-1889), who invented of several industrial tools, such as the "Jones Mixer." Jones eventually became chief engineer for Carnegie. Carnegie frequently pressured Jones to decrease employee wages, only to have Jones fearlessly reiterate the efficacy of enlightened labor policy. A product of the engineering vision of James Eads (1820-87), the Eads Bridge across the Mississippi River at St. Louis, Missouri, symbolized the interrelationship of steel, railroads, and great industrial fortunes during the Gilded Age. To build the bridge, Eads relied on Carnegie to supply high-quality steel, give bridge-building counsel, and provide the financial acumen that became essential for raising large sums of money for Eads finally to complete his bridge in 1874.

By the time that he sold out his vast interests for nearly a half billion dollars in 1901 (Carnegie himself took about half that amount, the rest went to his associates) to a syndicate formed by J. P. Morgan to organize the United States Steel Company, the Carnegie Steel Co. had become an immense organization. It included all the processes of steel production--from the great furnaces and finishing mills of Pittsburgh to the railroads and lake steamers that move the ores and the finished products.

Senior staff

By the 1870s he made New York City his base and seldom visited Pittsburgh, leaving operations in the hands of senior subordinates. Carnegie always maintained that the secret of his business success lay not in his own genius as a maker of steel, but in his ability to select the proper man for the job to be done. He was one of the first industrialists to hire scientists for research, and he suggested for his own epitaph, "Here lies a man who was able to surround himself with men far cleverer than himself." Certainly the list of men who owed their success in steelmaking to Carnegie--a list which would include Henry Clay Frick, Charles M. Schwab, Carnegie's own brother, Thomas M. Carnegie, and the greatest steel man of them all, Capt. "Bill" Jones--is an impressive one. But such a statement underestimates Carnegie's own genius in organization and the shrewdness of his business judgment. His faith in America as a land of business opportunity never wavered, and much of his financial success was due to his policy of expanding in periods of depression. He distrusted the ever-growing tendency of American business toward trust-building and overcapitalization, and the Carnegie Steel Co. remained a simple partnership arrangement greatly undercapitalized in terms of the actual value of its holdings and its annual profits.

Homestead

Carnegie prided himself on his enlightened labor policy, although his reputation for benevolence was publicly damaged by the tragic Homestead Strike of 1892. Carnegie originally was favorable toward the union, the Amalgamated Association of Iron and Steel Workers in the 1870s and 1880s because it did not threaten profitability and helped guarantee steady production. In 1886 he published a series of articles in the Forum magazine that revealed liberal position on labor policies and benevolence toward his workers. Scholars have since argued that Carnegie's anti-union position during the Homestead affair either represents a reversal of his earlier position or the insincerity of his professed convictions. However, a consideration of Homestead within the context of industry-wide developments in the relationship between labor unions and steel production indicates that a new emphasis on unskilled labor (a result of new technology and changes in market demand) undermined the strength of the union. The Homestead lockout did not therefore represent a shift in Carnegie's position toward labor unions; rather it was the result of a downturn in the steel market and changes in methods of production.

Philanthropy

In spite of his espousal of Herbert Spencer's philosophy and portions of the social Darwinism of the period, Carnegie remained deeply committed to many of the Chartist ideals of his boyhood. He rejected Spencer's attacks on philanthropy. In 1868 when, at the age of 33, his personal income had already reached $50,000 annually, he had written himself a note vowing to quit business shortly and never earn more than he was then earning, for "the amassing of wealth is one of the worst species of idolatry." He did not keep this resolution, but as his fortune grew so did his concern for reconciling great wealth with social and political democracy. Out of this concern came his own solution in his famous "Gospel of Wealth," first published in the North American Review in 1889. Here Carnegie stated his doctrine concerning the responsibility of the man of wealth to society. He must use the fortune he has earned to provide greater opportunity for all and to increase man's knowledge of himself and of his universe.

Libraries

He had begun the practice of his own doctrine in the building of libraries in the 1880s, the particular philanthropy with which Carnegie's name was to be ever associated by the general public. His first gift was a library to his native town of Dunfermline in 1882. In 1898 he built The Carnegie Library in Homestead, Pennsylvania. Besides a library, the building included a bowling alley, an indoor swimming pool, basketball courts and other athletic facilities, a music hall, and space for a large number of meeting rooms for local clubs and organizations. Carnegie Steel (later US Steel), by far the area's largest employer, controlled the library's board for many years. Carnegie systematically funded 2,507 libraries throughout the English-speaking world, including 1,689 libraries in the United States, 600 libraries in Great Britain, 66 in Ireland, and 125 libraries in Canada. They served not only as free circulating collections of books, magazines and newspapers, but also provided classrooms for growing school districts, Red Cross stations, and public meeting spaces, not to mention permanent jobs for the graduates of newly formed library schools. 108 libraries went to colleges. Usually there was no charge to read or borrow; in New Zealand, however, local taxes were too low to support libraries and most charged subscription fees to their users. The arrangements were always the same: Carnegie would provide the funds for the building but only after the municipal government had provided a site for the building and had passed an ordinance for the purchase of books and future maintenance of the library through taxation. This policy was in accord with Carnegie's philosophy that the dispensation of wealth for the benefit of society must never be in the form of free charity but rather must be as a buttress to the community's responsibility for its own welfare.

In the 18 years after he retired from steel he succeeded in giving back to society over $300,000,000, largely through the creation of one of the most remarkable group of philanthropic foundations in the world. These foundations included, in Great Britain: the Carnegie Trust for the Universities of Scotland, the Carnegie Dunfermline Trust, the Carnegie Hero Fund Trust, the Carnegie United Kingdom Trust; and in the United States: the Carnegie Institute of Pittsburgh, the Hero Fund Commission, the Carnegie Institute of Washington, the Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching, the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, and the largest of all, the Carnegie Corporation of New York with a basic endowment of $135,000,000.

Family life

He was engaged to Louise Whitfield of New York, but married her in 1886 at age 51 only after his mother died in 1886. Carnegie spent at least six months of each year with his wife in Scotland. Soon after the birth of his only child, Margaret, he purchased a vast estate in northern Scotland on the Firth of Dornoch and built the castle of Skibo. Here each summer, Carnegie entertained those people, particularly in the world of literature, science, and education, who interested him most. It is indicative of his own interests that the man who became perhaps his closest friend was not a man of business, but John Morley, writer, historian, and leader of the British Liberal party. Carnegie acquired American citizenship as a minor when his father became a naturalized citizen in the early 1850s. He retained dual citizenship, however, and in the 1880s serious considered standing for election to the British Parliament.

In his last years, Carnegie became convinced that war was man's greatest evil, and he devoted much of his time and fortune toward the securing of international peace. He built the Pan American Union building in Washington, D.C., to promote hemispheric peace and the Hague Peace Palace in the Netherlands to support international arbitration. The outbreak of World War I came as a tragic conclusion to all of his hopes, and although he supported the Allied cause, he never recovered from the shock of the war he had worked so hard to prevent, and he retired almost completely from the public scene. He died in Lenox, Massachusetts, on Aug. 11, 1919.

He wrote many articles for leading magazines in Britain and the U.S. His books include An American Four-in-Hand in Britain (1883), Round the World (1884), Triumphant Democracy (1886), The Empire of Business (1902), Life of James Watt (1905), Problems of To-Day (1908), and The Autobiography of Andrew Carnegie, published posthumously in 1920. ==See Steel industry, history

Bibliography

• Jones, Theodore. Carnegie Libraries Across America: A Public Legacy. 1997. 181 pp.
• Krass, Peter. Carnegie. (2002). 612 pp.
• Krause, Paul. The Battle for Homestead, 1880-1892: Politics, Culture, and Steel. U. of Pittsburgh Pr., 1992. 548 pp.

• Wall, Joseph. Andrew Carnegie (New York, Oxford University Press, 1970).

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