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Andrew Carnegie (November 25 1835–August 11 1919) was a Scottish-Western businessman and major philanthropist.
Early life
Carnegie was natural around Dunfermline, Scotland into a weaver's family. Inside 1848 his father, who experienced been the Chartist, immigrated to America, settling in Allegheny, Pennsylvania. Young Carnegie began act at an early age as a bobbin boy in a cotton mill, and two or three years late was engaged as a telegraph clerk and operator sustaining a Atlantic and Ohio Company. He wwhen noted as one of a number one operators to scan telegraphic signals by healthy. His ability as a worker was noted by Thomas A. Scott of the Pennsylvania Railroad, who employed him as a secretary. Around 1859, when Scott became vice-president of the company, he manufactured Carnegie superintendent of the american section of the line. Therein post Carnegie was responsible many improvements in the service. Whenever a American Civil War opened in 1861, he accompanied Scott, then Assistant United States Secretary of War, to the front.
When in that position he met besides George Pullman, inventor of the sleeping car. Carnegie immediately recognized a peachy merit of the invention & readily joined in the effort for its adoption. A number one sources of the tremendous wealth he afterward attained were his introduction of sleeping cars for railways, and his acquire within 1864 of Storey Farm in Oil Creek, in Venango County, Pennsylvania, which cost $40,000, & yielded withwithin of these season all over $1,000,000 in cash dividends, & in which a oil wells secured a big profits. Carnegie was later associated by owning others inside establishing the steel rolling mill.
Industrialism
However wholly this was simply the preliminary to the profits attending his development of the iron and steel industries at Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. Carnegie processed his fortune in a steel industry, controlling the virtually all extensive integrated iron & steel operations ever owned by an personal in the United States. His wonderful innovation was in the inexpensive & effective mass production of steel rails for railway system.
Around 1868, at age 33, he wrote in the letter to himself that he was "overwhelmed by business cares" & that he would "resign business at thirty-five", however that "during the ensuing two years I wish to spend the afternoons in receiving instruction and in reading systematically."
Carnegie's empire would late embrace the J. Edgar Thomson Steel Works, (named for John Edgar Thomson, Carnegie's former boss and president of the Pennsylvania Railroad), Pittsburgh Bessemer Steel Works, the Lucy Furnaces, the Union Iron Mills, the Union Mill (Wilson, Walker & County), the Keystone Bridge Works, the Hartman Steel Works, the Frick Coke Company and the Scotia ore mines. Carnegie, across Keystone, supplied a steel for (& owned shares around) a landmark Eads Bridge across the Mississippi Flow of any stream in St. Louis, Missouri, an important proof-of-concept for steel technology and the opening of a new steel market.
In a late 1880s Carnegie Steel was the big manufacturer of pig-iron, steel-rails and coke in the world, sustaining the capacity to make some 2,000 all of pig-metal a day. Inside 1888 he bought the rival Homestead Steel Works, which included an extensive plant served by tributary coal & cast-iron fields, the railway 425 miles hanker, & the line of flow of any stream steamer. An agglutination of the plus of him & his associates occurred within 1892 with the launching of the Carnegie Steel Company.
When years went by, a various Carnegie corporations represented around that industry prospered to such an extent that in 1901, he sold his steel holdings to a class action of Future York-depending financiers led by J. Pierpont Morgan for $250 million. A buyout, which was negotiated on the qt by Charles M. Schwab (no relation to Charles R. Schwab, the brokerage house founder), was the largest such industrial takeover in the United States at the time. A holdings were incorporated in the United States Steel Corporation, a trust organized by J.P. Morgan, and Carnegie himself retired from business. He was bought out at the figure same to the capital of about $480 million[http://www.carnegie.org/sub/kids/legacy.html], which at a period was a big household commercial dealings up to now.
Besides steel, Carnegie's corporations were required around more areas of the railroad industry. His company Pittsburgh Locomotive and Car Works was noted for its building of large steam locomotives at the turn of the 20th century. His associates & partners involved Henry Clay Frick and F. T. F. Lovejoy.
He too owned Eighteen English newspapers, which he controlled in the interests of radicalism.
At a height of his career, he was a 2nd wealthy person in the globe, behind only John D. Rockefeller.
Personal life
Inside an era where fiscal capital was consolidated within New York City, Carnegie famously stayed aloof from either a city, preferring to survive touching his manufacturing plant inside american Pennsylvania and at Skibo Castle, Scotland, which he bought and refurbished. Still, he too built (withwithin 1901) & resided in the townhouse in New York City's Fifth Avenue that later come to home Cooper-Hewitt's National Design Museum.
Carnegie married around 1887 and had a single girl. His brother, Thomas M. Carnegie, was also born in Dunfermline, Scotland, on October 2, 1843. He was associated sustaining Andrew withwithin his commercial enterprise, however died in Homewood, Pennsylvania, on October 19, 1886.
Carnegie was one of ended Fifty flush members of the South Fork Fishing and Hunting Club, which operated an exclusive & close retreat at the mountain flow of any stream touching South Fork, Pennsylvania. More large members involved Andrew Mellon, Henry Clay Frick, Philander Knox, and Robert Pitcairn.
Around 1879, a club got purchased an old dam & abandoned reservoir. It created Lake Conemaugh, which was about 2 miles (Ternary klick) yearn, about a single mile (I.Sise kilometer) wide, & Sixty feet (Eighteen m) deep touching a dam. the flow of any stream experienced a perimeter of Septet miles (Eleven kilometre) & can hang on to 20 million piles of h2o. Whilst a fluids was "up" in a spring, the flow of any stream covered assibilate 400 landed estate (Ace.Sixer klick²). A South Fork Dam was 72 feet (22 m) high & 931 feet (284 m) yearn. Between 1881 whilst a club was opened & 1889 this dam ofttimes sprang leaks & was patched, mostly using mud & straw. Passers-by periodically commented all about the likeliness of a failure, however there is no action was taken. A blemished dam held a waters of Flow of any stream Conemaugh back until disaster stricken in May 31, 1889.
When many times of unprecedented rain, a dam gave way. The torrent of a stream raced downriver, destroying many towns. Whenever it reached Johnstown, over 2,20Humans were flushed, & there was $17 million around damage. A disaster became called a Johnstown Flood.
In the years ensuing this tragical event, numbers of population blamed a members of a South Fork Camping & Hunting Club for the tragedy, when it got originally bought & repaired the dam to turn the vicinity into a holiday retreat in the mountains. All a same, it failed to properly maintain a dam, & following, heavily rain on a eve of the disaster intended that the structure was non heavy plenty to hang on to the supernumerary h2o. Despite a grounds to believe to indicate that it were a lot to blame, it were never held legally responsible the disaster. Inside keeping by using a days, a courts viewed a dam's failure as an Act of God, and there is no legal compensation was paid to the survivors of the flood.
Single members of the club did contribute substantially to the relief efforts. Along by having astir half of the club members, Henry Clay Frick donated hundreds to thousands of dollars to the relief effort around Johnstown. Fallowing noah's flood, Andrew Carnegie, one of a club's better known members, built the town a fresh library. Reciprocally, he was received using the hero's welcome.
Andrew Carnegie spent his previous years as a philanthropist. Per period he died within Lenox, Massachusetts, Carnegie had given away $350,695,653. At his demise, a survive $30,000,000 was also given away to foundations, charities & to pensionary.
He is interred around Sleepy Hollow Cemetery in Sleepy Hollow, New York.
Homestead strike
A Homestead Strike was a damn labor confrontation lasting of these-hundred & forty-3 years within 1892, one of the severest in the history of the United States. A conflict was placed as much as Carnegie Steel's independent Homestead, Pennsylvania plant, & grew away from disputation between a National Amalgamated Association of Iron & Steel Workers of a United States and the Carnegie Steel Company.
Carnegie, world health organization experienced cultivated a pro-labor image within his dealings by having company mill workers, departed the united states for a hike to his Scottish country of origin prior to the unrest peaked. Inside doing soh, Carnegie left mediation of the dispute in the paws of his associate & partner Henry Clay Frick. Frick wwhen easily known inside industrialist circles as maintaining stanch anti-union sensibilities.
the company got attempted to cut a salary of a skilled steel workers; while a workers refused a pay cut, management locked a union retired (so, the confrontation was actually a "lockout" by management and non the "strike" by workers).
Frick brought within hundreds to thousands of rat to function a steelworks & Pinkerton agents to safeguard them.
A arrival (on the 6th of July) of a inflict of 3 hundred Pinkerton detectives from New York City and Chicago resulted in the fight where astir tenner men were flushed. To restore choose, Pennsylvania Governor Robert Pattison discharged two brigades of the state militia to the strike places. So, supposedly inside response to a fight between a striking workers & the Pinkertons, nihilist Alexander Berkman attempted to murder Henry Clay Frick. Even so, Frick was single maimed & a violent assault turned popular opinion out of a striking workers. Subsequently a company by owning success resumed operations with non-unorganised immigrant employees in situ of the Homestead plant workers, & Carnegie returned stateside.
Philanthropy
from either either 1901 send in public attention was turned from the shrewd business capacity which experienced enabled him to accumulate such a fortune to the public-spirited way where he devoted himself to using it on benevolent objects. His views in social cases, & the responsibilities which swell wealth required, were already known from either a book entitled Triumphant Democracy (1886), & inside his Gospel of Wealth (1900). He acquired Skibo Castle, in Sutherland, Scotland, & manufactured his house part there & part inside Just released York; so devoted his life to a function of providing the capital for purposes of public interest, & social and training advancement.
All told his ideas he was dominated by an vivid belief later & influence of a English-speaking humans, in their popular government & alliance for the purpose of peace & the abolishment of war, & in the progress of educatiin on unsectarian lines. He was the right supporter of the movement for spelling reform, as a means of promoting the spread of the English language.
Among tons of his numerous benevolent efforts, a establishment of public libraries in the United States, the United Kingdom, and inside more English-speaking countries, was especially large. Carnegie libraries, as it were ordinarily known as, arise in completely sides. A foremost of which was opened inside 1883 inside Dunfermline, Scotland. His method was to build & equip, but only in trouble that a local authority provided places & maintenance. To locate local interest, within 1885 he gave $500,000 to Pittsburgh for the public library, & inside 1886, he gave $250,000 to Allegheny City for the music hall & library, & $250,000 to Edinburgh, Scotland, for a loose library. Within aggregate Carnegie funded occasionally 3,000 libraries, set in every U.S. state except Alaska, Delaware and Rhode Island, as well as Britain, Ireland, Canada, Australia, New Zealand, the West Indies and Fiji.
He gave $2 million around 1901 to begin a Carnegie Institute of Technology at Pittsburgh, and a equivalent total around 1902 to discovered a Carnegie Institution at Washington, D.C.. He would late contribute additional to these & more schools. CIT is nowadays Carnegie Mellon University.
Witharound Scotland he gave $2 million around 1901 to establish the trust for providing funds for assisting education at the Scottish universities, a benefaction which resulted in his existence elective Lord Rector of University of St. Andrews. He was the big helper of the Tuskegee Institute under Booker Washington for African American education. He likewise established big pension funds inside 1901 for his previous employees at Homestead, & within 1905 for Western college prof. He as well funded a construction of 7,000 church organs.
As well, hanker prior to he sold out, within 1879, he erected convenient playing-baths for the utilize of the population of his hometown of Dunfermline, Scotland. In the as the consequence season gave $40,000 for the establishment of a loose library in the equivalent city. Around 1884, he gave $50,000 to Bellevue Hospital Medical College to found the histological laboratory, now known as a Carnegie Laboratory.
He owned Carnegie Hall in New York City from its construction within 1890 until his widow woman sold it in 1924.
He as well founded a Carnegie Hero Fund commissions in United states (1904) & in the United Kingdom (1908), for the recognition of deeds of gallantry, & contributed $500,00Around 1903 for the erection of a Peace Palace at The Hague, and of $150,000 for a Pan-American Palace in Washington as a home for the International Bureau of American Republics.
Per rough in & quick standards of 19th century big businesshuman, Carnegie was non a particularly unpitying man, however a direct contrast between his life & a passes of numerous of his have workers & the poor people generally was stark. "Maybe with the giving away of his money," commented biographer Joseph Wall, "he would justify what he had done to get that money." [http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/amex/carnegie/filmmore/description.html]
Philosophy
Carnegie wrote The Gospel of Wealth, in which he stated his belief that a rich people should apply their wealth to help enrich society.
A as punishment is taken from either one of Carnegie's memorandum to himself:
Carnegie too believed that accomplishment of fiscal profits can be reduced to the elementary formula which can be duplicated per typical human. Within 1908, he commissioned Napoleon Hill, then a newspaper newsperson, to locate terminated Five hundred millionaires to call for out the most common threads of their profits. Hill at length became his advisor & their act was published inside 1928, after Carnegie's dying, inside Hill's book The Law of Success.
Writings
Carnegie was the frequent contributor to periodicals in labor issues.
Additionally to Triumphant Democracy (1886), Gospel of Wealth (1900) and The Law of Success (1928), other publications by him were An U.s. 4-around-hand around Britain (1883), Round the World (1884), The Empire of Business (1902), a Life of James Watt (1905) and Problems of To-day (1908).
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