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Dromo's Den
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[Up] [Dromo's Den] Andrew Carnegie Biography CARNEGIE, kär-nĕg'ĭ, Andrew (1835–[1919]). An American manufacturer and philanthropist, born in Dunfermline, Fifeshire, Scotland. He came to the United States in 1848 and worked as a weaver's assistant in a cotton factory at Allegheny, Pa., for little more than one dollar a week. At the age of 14 he became a messenger boy in the Pittsburgh (Pa.) office of the Ohio Telegraph Company. He soon learned telegraphy, entered the service of the Pennsylvania Railroad, and received a position as a telegraph operator. He advanced by successive promotions until he was superintendent of the Pittsburgh division. His interest in the organization of the Woodruff Sleeping Car Company laid the foundation of his fortune, and careful investments in oil lands near Oil City, Pa., increased his means. During the Civil War he rendered valuable services to the War Department as superintendent of military railroads and government telegraph lines in the East. After the war he entered actively into the development of ironworks of various kinds, and established at Pittsburgh the Keystone Bridge Works and the Union Iron Works. In 1868 he introduced into this country the Bessemer process of making steel. In 1888 he was the principal owner of the Homestead Steel Works and had a controlling interest in seven other large steel plants. His interests were consolidated in 1899 in the Carnegie Steel Company, which was merged into the United States Steel Corporation in 1901, when he retired from business. Mr. Carnegie's benefactions have exceeded in amount those of any other American. In 1912 alone he gave $130,403,000. Among his donations may be mentioned: to the Carnegie Institute of Technology (q.v.), Pittsburgh, $10,000,-000; to the Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching (q.v.), $15,000,000; (for his library benefactions, see Libraries;) to universities of Scotland, $10,000,000; to the fund for the benefit of the employees of the Carnegie Steel Company, $5,000,000. In 1902 he gave $10,000,000 (more than that amount since) to found the Carnegie Institution (q.v.) of Washington, D.C. In 1904 Mr. Carnegie established what has been termed the "Hero fund," of $5,000,000. (See Carnegie Hero Fund Commission.) For the United Kingdom he established a hero fund in 1908. He built a Palace of Peace for the International Court of Arbitration at The Hague, besides creating (1910) the $10,000,000 Carnegie Endowment for International Peace (q.v.); and he built a home for the International Bureau of American Republics in Washington, D. C. In 1912 he announced that he had given all his fortune except $25,000,000 to the Carnegie Corporation (organized in New York, Nov. 10, 1911). He was lord rector of St. Andrews University in 1901, 1902, and 1906, and of Aberdeen University in 1912. Mr. Carnegie's publications include: An American Four-in-Hand in Britain (1883); Round the World (1884); Triumphant Democracy (1886); The Gospel of Wealth (1900); Empire of Business (1902); James Watt (1905); Problems of To-Day (1909). Consult Alderson, Andrew Carnegie: The Man and his Work (New York, 1902). The New International Encyclopaedia, Vol. IV (New York: Dodd, Mead & Co., 1920) 565. |