Andrew carnegie who is

It was clearly a formative experience, and one which he hoped might be of similar benefit to others. Starting in , Carnegie began funding the construction of thousands of libraries. The precise number he built is disputed; at the time of his death, the tally stood at 2, libraries. To ensure that communities were equally invested, he would only pay for buildings—and only after local authorities showed him credible plans for acquiring books and hiring staff.

During his lifetime, Carnegie created a number of charitable institutions that bore his name. A year later, he launched the Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching, whose many accomplishments include the Flexner Report which revolutionized American medical education and the provision of pensions to college faculty members which increased the attractiveness of an academic career.

Other organizations would bear his name, including the Carnegie Relief Fund for the benefit of injured steelworkers , the Carnegie Dunfermline Trust to support his hometown , and the Carnegie Trust for the Universities of Scotland to bolster higher education in his native land.

For much of the final third of his life, he devoted his fortune and personal influence to encourage the peaceful resolution of international conflicts. For precisely that purpose, he created and closely attended to the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace and the Carnegie Council for Ethics in International Affairs. The outbreak of World War I dashed his hopes of world peace and precipitated his retreat from the public stage.

A somewhat ambiguous achievement was the creation of the Carnegie Corporation. The Corporation was among the first and remains among the largest grantmaking foundations in the United States, with consequential achievements including early support for the National Bureau of Economic Research, the research of Gunnar Myrdal, and the development of Sesame Street. And yet, the creation of the Corporation represented a failure of sorts for Carnegie—a failure to achieve his stated goal of giving away his entire fortune and dying penniless.

None of his writings had more influence than those about philanthropy, which were published as two articles in the North American Review in and collected in a book called The Gospel of Wealth and Other Timely Essays. His views grew out of an economic and political philosophy that owed a lot to English classical liberalism and social theorists such as Herbert Spencer. Carnegie attributed his business success not only to his own talents, but also to an economic system that valued enterprise, protected property, and encouraged competition.

The Carnegies disembarked, disoriented by the activity of the city but anxious to continue on to the final destination -- Pittsburgh. The Carnegies booked passage on a steamer up the Hudson River to Albany, where they found a number of jostling agents eagerly competing to carry them west on the Erie Canal. At 35 miles per day, it was slow travel and not particularly pleasant. Their "quarters" were a narrow shelf in a hot, unventilated cabin. Finally, they reached Buffalo.

From there, it was only three more trips by canal boat. After three weeks travel from New York, they finally arrived in Pittsburgh, the place where Andrew would build his fortune. Welcome to Pittsburgh When the Carnegies arrived in , Pittsburgh was already a bustling industrial city. But the city had begun to pay an environmental price for its success. The downtown had been gutted by fire in ; already the newly constructed buildings were so blackened by soot that they were indistinguishable from older ones.

The Carnegies lived in a neighborhood alternately called Barefoot Square and Slab town. Their home on Rebecca Street was a flimsy, dark frame house -- a far cry from their cozy stone cottage in Scotland.

If you washed your face and hands they were as dirty as ever in an hour. The soot gathered in the hair and irritated the skin, and for a time Often described as "hell with the lid off," Pittsburgh by the turn of the century was recognized as the center of the new industrial world. A British economist described its conditions: "Grime and squalor unspeakable, unlimited hours of work, ferocious contests between labor and capital, the fiercest commercial scrambling for money literally sweated out of the people, the utter absorption by high and low of every faculty in getting and grabbing, total indifference to all other ideals and aspirations.

But if Pittsburgh had become a focus of unrestrained capitalism, it also drove the American economy. And to the men who ran them, the city's industries meant not just dirty air and water, but progress.

Pittsburgh's furnaces symbolized a world roaring toward the future, spurred onward by American ingenuity and omnipotent technology. William Carnegie secured work in a cotton factory. He did each job to the best of his ability and seized every opportunity to take on new responsibilities. He memorized Pittsburgh's street layout as well as the names and addresses of the important people he delivered to.

Carnegie often was asked to deliver messages to the theater. He arranged to make these deliveries at night--and stayed on to watch plays by Shakespeare and other great playwrights. In what would be a life-long pursuit of knowledge, Carnegie also took advantage of a small library that a local benefactor made available to working boys.

One of the men Carnegie met at the telegraph office was Thomas A. Scott, then beginning his impressive career at Pennsylvania Railroad. At the outbreak of the Civil War, Scott was hired to supervise military transportation for the North, and Carnegie worked as his right hand man. The Civil War fueled the iron industry, and by the time the war was over, Carnegie saw the potential in the field and resigned from Pennsylvania Railroad.

It was one of many bold moves that would typify Carnegie's life in industry and earn him his fortune. He then turned his attention to founding the Keystone Bridge Company in , where he focused on replacing wooden bridges with stronger iron ones. But his wealth troubled him, as did the ghosts of his radical past. He expressed his uneasiness with the businessman's life, promising that he would stop working in two years and pursue a life of good works: "To continue much longer overwhelmed by business cares and with most of my thoughts wholly upon the way to make more money in the shortest time, must degrade me beyond hope of permanent recovery.

I will resign business at thirty-five, but during the ensuing two years I wish to spend the afternoons in receiving instruction and in reading systematically. Making Money and Starting a Family Carnegie would continue making unparalleled amounts of money for the next 30 years. Two years after he wrote that letter Carnegie would embrace a new steel refining process being used by Englishman Henry Bessemer to convert huge batches of iron into steel, which was much more flexible than brittle iron.

Carnegie threw his own money into the process and even borrowed heavily to build a new steel plant near Pittsburgh in Carnegie was ruthless in keeping down costs and managed by the motto "watch costs, and the profits take care of themselves.

In , Carnegie, at age 45, began courting Louise Whitfield, age Carnegie's mother was the primary obstacle to the relationship. Foremost, he believed that everyone was entitled to a proper education. For this reason, Carnegie was involved with the founding of many schools and universities. Another way he contributed to public education was through his interest in free public libraries.

His love of reading stemmed from a positive childhood experience of reading from the personal collection of a merchant in his town. Carnegie wanted to make those same reading experiences available to the public at no charge.

He is responsible for the establishment of approximately 2, libraries worldwide. One of the first of the Carnegie libraries was the Carnegie Free Library in Allegheny, Pennsylvania, which became the model for the thousands of libraries to follow Ibid. The second of Carnegie's philanthropic focuses was the idea of peace among all nations. He established many trusts that focused on researching the causes of war.

One of his greatest contributions to this cause was the establishment of the Peace Palace in The Hague, which houses an extensive library of international law resources Ibid. He often stressed the importance of people distributing their own wealth, but on a scale of philanthropy as large as Carnegie's, that task quickly became impossible. Therefore, the creation of the modern foundation was established.

Carnegie used a number of trustees to distribute his wealth throughout Britain and America, with the Carnegie Corporation among them. The trusts can be associated with numerous donations including libraries, theaters, music halls, park lands, and schools Ibid.

The level of philanthropy displayed by Andrew Carnegie during his lifetime and beyond has been the foundation for traditions of philanthropy today. His endeavors began the first efforts toward the modern day foundation or trust.

His reflections and call to responsibility or challenge to other affluent people to give away their wealth drew the attention of many others to do the same, including John D. Rockefeller and W. John Piermont J. Morgan , with whom Andrew Carnegie made his largest business transaction, became the sole manager of J. Morgan and Company following his father's death in Family Education Network His career climb was one of financial battles, but he eventually developed a railroad empire by reorganizing and consolidating railroad companies throughout the U.

In , he formed the United States Steel Corporation after a major merger with Andrew Carnegie's steel corporations. Steel became the first billion-dollar corporation in the world.

In , Andrew Carnegie became the personal assistant to Thomas A. Scott, at the time, was the superintendent of the Pennsylvania Railroad's western division. He later moved on to be appointed assistant secretary of war, supervising all governmental railways and transportation lines. Andrew Carnegie founded many organizations and trusts in his later life. These organizations include, but are not limited to, the following:.

Department of Mathematics. Thomas A. Scott Professorship in Mathematics. University of Pennsylvania. Let's Talk Business Network. Andrew Carnegie. Livesay, Harold C.

Andrew Carnegie and the Rise of Big Business. Boston: Little, Brown and Company, Swetnam, George and Helene Smith. The Carnegie Nobody Knows. ISBN: Carnegie, Andrew. Grade Level:. He is responsible for the construction and donation of approximately 2, public libraries in the United States, Europe and around the world.