Andrew Carnegie

Andrew Carnegie was born in Dunfermline, Scotland, on November 25, 1835, the first son of William Carnegie and Margaret Carnegie. His father was a linen weaver and a local leader of the Chartist movement; his mother was a daughter of Thomas Morrison.⁠[1]

His father and his uncle Tom Morrison led the local Chartist movement, and Tom Morrison organized a national general strike in 1842. When steam looms reached Dunfermline in 1847, hand weavers lost their work, and his mother opened a small grocery shop and mended shoes to support the family.⁠[2]

After the Chartist movement failed in 1848, the Carnegie family sold their belongings, borrowed £20 and sailed on the “Wiscasset,” a voyage of about 50 days, to New York; they then traveled by steamer and the Erie Canal to Pittsburgh and settled in Allegheny, PennsylvaniaPennsylvaniaPennsylvania (officially the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania) is a Middle Atlantic state of the United States; its capital is Harrisburg, and Philadelphia and Pittsburgh are its two great metropolitan areas. One of the original 13 states, it ratified the U.S. Constitution on December 12, 1787, the second state to do so. Its population in the 2020 census (April 1, 2020) was 13,002,700.Open the full entry, now part of Pittsburgh.⁠[2][3]

At 13 he worked from dawn until dark as a bobbin boy in a cotton mill, earning $1.20 a week; a year later he was hired as a messenger for a local telegraph company. He educated himself by reading and attending night school.⁠[4][3]

In 1853 Thomas A. Scott of the Pennsylvania Railroad hired Carnegie at $35 a month as his private secretary and telegrapher. In 1859 Carnegie succeeded Scott as superintendent of the railroad’s Pittsburgh division, and he helped introduce the first successful sleeping car on American railroads.⁠[2][3]

During the Civil War he worked as Scott’s right-hand man on military transportation for the North. While with the railroad he invested in Keystone Bridge, several iron and rail companies, an oilfield in Pennsylvania and the Woodruff Sleeping Car Company.⁠[2][3]

Carnegie left the Pennsylvania Railroad in 1865 and began managing the Keystone Bridge Company, which focused on iron bridges. Within three years his income reached $50,000 a year, and by 1868 he was worth $400,000; he wrote that he intended to leave business at 35 and pursue good works.⁠[3][2]

From about 1872–73, at about age 38, Carnegie began concentrating on steel and founded the J. Edgar Thomson Steel Works near Pittsburgh, which later became part of the Carnegie Steel Company. His company built the first American steel plants using the Bessemer process, later adopted the open-hearth furnace, and integrated vertically by acquiring coke fields, ore deposits, ships and railroads.⁠[3]

He went into partnership with Henry ClayHenry ClayHenry Clay (1777–1852) was an American lawyer and statesman who represented Kentucky for many years in the U.S. House and Senate, served as Speaker of the House and as Secretary of State, and was known for brokering sectional compromises such as the Missouri Compromise and the Compromise of 1850. He ran unsuccessfully for president three times.Open the full entry Frick, an industrialist whose business was based on coal fuel; Frick later managed the Homestead plant.⁠[2]

Carnegie’s philanthropy began around 1870. In 1881 he made his first gift of a free public library, to his hometown of Dunfermline; a letter dated the same year pledged funds for the Carnegie Library of Pittsburgh, initially $250,000 and later raised to $1 million.⁠[1][4]

Carnegie published “Triumphant Democracy” in 1886, with a revised edition in 1893. His mother, Margaret Carnegie, died on November 10, 1886.⁠[3][2]

He began courting Louise Whitfield in 1880; they became engaged in September 1883 and married in a small private ceremony on April 22, 1887.⁠[2]

In 1889 Carnegie’s vast holdings were consolidated into the Carnegie Steel Company. In 1890 the output of the American steel industry surpassed that of Great Britain for the first time, and by 1900 Carnegie Steel alone produced more steel than all of Great Britain.⁠[3][2]

Also in 1889 he published the article “Wealth,” later known as “The Gospel of Wealth,” arguing that the rich are “trustees” of their wealth who should use their surplus for “the improvement of mankind,” and writing that “The man who dies thus rich dies disgraced.”⁠[1][3]

Carnegie’s “Music Hall” opened on May 5, 1891, and soon became known simply as Carnegie Hall.⁠[4]

By early 1892 steel prices had fallen from $35 to $22 a gross ton. Henry C. Frick, in charge of the Carnegie-owned Homestead plant, moved to cut wages and break the Amalgamated Association of Iron and Steel Workers; Carnegie, then in Scotland, supported him behind the scenes. On June 25 Frick announced he would negotiate only with individual workers, and on June 29 he closed the mills, locking out 3,800 workers, who seized the mill two days later.⁠[5]

On July 6 about 300 Pinkerton detectives arrived by barge; the battle with the workers lasted about 12 hours, nearly a dozen people were killed, and the Pinkertons surrendered at 5 p.m. Carnegie afterward wrote that the works were “not worth one drop of human blood.” At Frick’s request the governor of Pennsylvania sent 8,500 National Guard troops, who took over the plant; by mid-August the mill was running with about 1,700 strikebreakers, and in mid-November the union conceded.⁠[5]

After the strike the company blacklisted its leaders, cut wages, imposed 12-hour days and eliminated 500 jobs.⁠[5]

In 1895 Carnegie gave $20 million to found what are now the Carnegie Museums of Pittsburgh.⁠[4]

In 1900 he funded the founding of the Carnegie Technical Schools to teach practical trades and skills to working people. In 1912 the school became the Carnegie Institute of Technology and began granting bachelor’s degrees, and in 1967 it merged with the Mellon Institute, a scientific research center founded by the Mellon family, to form Carnegie Mellon UniversityCarnegie Mellon UniversityCarnegie Mellon University (CMU) is a private research university in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. It grew out of the Carnegie Technical Schools, founded with funding from Andrew Carnegie in 1900, which were renamed the Carnegie Institute of Technology in 1912 and took the present name after merging with the Mellon Institute in 1967. The university is known for computer science, robotics, engineering, and the arts, and has campuses in Qatar, Silicon Valley, and Rwanda. As of September 2025, it enrolled 16,582 students. Its current president is Farnam Jahanian. On September 30, 2026, the university announced a $3 billion gift from Ken Griffin and plans to build a new campus in Miami.Open the full entry. His statement “My heart is in the work” later became part of the university’s official motto.⁠[6]

In 1901 Carnegie sold his company to J. P. MorganJ. P. MorganJ. P. Morgan (John Pierpont Morgan, 1837–1913) was an American financier and art collector who headed the banking house J.P. Morgan & Co., organized the reorganization of major railroads and large industrial consolidations, and played a role in American fiscal and financial crises.Open the full entry’s newly formed United States Steel Corporation for $480 million, of which he personally received $250 million. He then retired from business and devoted himself to philanthropy.⁠[3][2]

The same year he established the Carnegie Trust for the Universities of Scotland by deed with $10 million; it received its charter in 1902.⁠[4]

In 1902 Carnegie gave $22 million to found the Carnegie Institution of Washington, renamed the Carnegie Institution for Science in 2007. In 1903 he established the Carnegie Dunfermline Trust with about $4 million and gave $1.5 million for the Peace Palace, later associated with the World Court; in 1904 he set up the Carnegie Hero Fund Commission with $5 million; and in 1905 he founded the Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching with an initial endowment of $10 million.⁠[4][2]

In 1910 he gave $10 million to establish the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, and in 1911 he founded Carnegie Corporation of New York, dedicated to the “advancement and diffusion of knowledge and understanding,” serving as its first president; it was the last philanthropic institution he founded. In 1913 he established Carnegie UK with $10 million, and in 1914 he gave $2 million to found the Church Peace Union, today the Carnegie Council for Ethics in International Affairs.⁠[4]

He was among the early advocates of a “league of nations.” The outbreak of World War I in 1914 destroyed his hopes for peace, and his wife, Louise, said that his heart was broken.⁠[2]

Carnegie died in Lenox, MassachusettsMassachusettsMassachusetts (officially the Commonwealth of Massachusetts) is a state in the New England region of the northeastern United States; its capital and largest city is Boston. One of the original 13 states, it ratified the U.S. Constitution on February 6, 1788, the sixth state to do so. Its population in the 2020 census (April 1, 2020) was 7,029,917.Open the full entry, on August 11, 1919, at the age of 83, survived by his wife, Louise Whitfield Carnegie, and his daughter, Margaret Carnegie Miller. Until World War I the Carnegies had divided their time between Skibo Castle in northern Scotland, their home in New York and a summer house in Lenox.⁠[3][1]

His gifts during his lifetime totaled about $350 million, about $62 million of it in the British Empire and about $288 million in the United StatesUnited StatesThe United States is a federal country in North America made up of 50 states, the District of Columbia as the seat of government, and territories such as Puerto Rico and Guam; its capital is Washington, D.C. The Continental Congress adopted the Declaration of Independence on July 4, 1776. The 2020 census (April 1, 2020) counted a resident population of 331,449,281, and the 435 seats of the House of Representatives are apportioned among the states on the basis of the census.Open the full entry.⁠[3]

Carnegie’s writings include “Triumphant Democracy,” the essay collection “The Gospel of Wealth” (1900), “The Empire of Business” (1902), “Problems of To-day” (1908) and his “Autobiography,” published posthumously in 1920.⁠[3]

In the late 19th and early 20th centuries Carnegie funded the founding of 2,509 libraries, 1,679 of them in the United States, at a cost of more than $55 million. Carnegie Corporation of New York, which he founded, changed its name to the Andrew Carnegie Foundation in 2026.⁠[4]

The National Portrait Gallery of the Smithsonian InstitutionSmithsonian InstitutionThe Smithsonian Institution is a museum, education and research institution created by the U.S. Congress in 1846 with the bequest of the English scientist James Smithson. Based in Washington, D.C., it runs museums such as the National Air and Space Museum and the National Museum of Natural History, as well as the National Zoo.Open the full entry holds an oil portrait of Carnegie from about 1905, given by his daughter, Margaret Carnegie Miller. The gallery’s text judges that his role in the 1892 Homestead strike turned him into a “symbol of capitalist greed,” and notes that in “The Gospel of Wealth” he argued that the rich were morally obligated to spend their fortunes to benefit society.⁠[7]

The Andrew Carnegie Foundation calls him the “Founder of Modern Philanthropy.”⁠[4]

Andrew Carnegie Foundation: Official website: https://carnegie.org/ (opens in a new window).⁠[8]

Carnegie Mellon University: Official website: https://www.cmu.edu/ (opens in a new window).⁠[9]

Carnegie Hero Fund Commission: Official website: https://carnegiehero.org/ (opens in a new window).⁠[1]