Andrew CarnegieThe Steel King
The United States has been called “the land of the poor man’s opportunity.” More than one barefoot boy in it has passed from a log cabin to the White House. In no other country have there been such rises from poverty to wealth and position. There is often much to condemn in the methods by which vast wealth is acquired, but the task requires ability and talent of a kind, and the careers of these “captains of industry,” as they are well termed, are regarded with interest.
A typical man of this class is Andrew Carnegie, who has risen from extreme poverty to vast wealth. He was born in 1837 in Scotland. His father, a master weaver, lost work when machines took the place of hand-looms; he emigrated to the United States when Andrew was a boy of eleven. Andrew began work when he was twelve as a bobbin-boy in a cotton factory in Pennsylvania, at weekly wages of a dollar and twenty cents.
When he was fourteen, he became a telegraph messenger boy and earned three dollars a week. In hisspare time, he learned telegraphy and became an expert operator.
He was shown a model of a sleeping car of which he was quick to see the advantages; his first business investment was in a sleeping car company, and the success of this laid the foundation of his fortune.
Later on, he became interested in iron works of various kinds. He foresaw that iron bridges would largely take the place of wooden ones. He formed a company to make the parts for iron bridges. Later, he saw the superiority of steel over iron. In 1868 he introduced into America the Bessemer process of making steel. He acquired one after another seven great iron and steel works; moreover, he acquired coal and iron fields and railways and steamboats to control transportation.
In 1889 his plant at Homestead was the scene of a strike, one of the fiercest contests in America between capital and organized labor. A number of workmen and detectives were killed, and the militia had to be called out to put down the riot.
In 1899 Carnegie’s interest in different iron and steel plants were consolidated; in 1902 there was formed the United States Steel Corporation, a vast trust with a capital of over a billion dollars, which employs forty thousand people. The year that this trust was formed Carnegie retired from business: he received for his share in the trust two hundred and fifty million dollars’ worth of bonds bearing five per cent. interest, thus securinghim an income of about fourteen million dollars a year. The Steel King, his wife, and daughter, make their home at Skibo Castle, a magnificent residence in Scotland.
Mr. Carnegie says that a man who has accumulated a great fortune ought to share it with the people. Among the objects which he considers most worthy the aid of men of wealth, he names universities, free libraries, hospitals, public parks, swimming baths, public halls, and church buildings. His own favorite charity is the aid of public libraries to which he has given millions of dollars. In 1902 he gave ten million dollars to found Carnegie Institution in Washington “for promotion of study and research.”
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