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Andrew Carnegie (November 25, 1835 – August 11, 1919) was a Scottish - American industrialist, businessman, entrepreneur and a major philanthropist. Carnegie was born in Dunfermline, Scotland, and migrated to the United States as a child with his parents. His first job in the United States was as a factory worker in a bobbin factory. Later on he became a bill logger for the owner of the company. Soon after he became a messenger boy. Eventually he progressed up the ranks of a telegraph company. He built Pittsburgh's Carnegie Steel Company, which was later merged with Elbert H. Gary's Federal Steel Company and several smaller companies to create U.S. Steel. With the fortune he made from business among others he built Carnegie Hall, later he turned to philanthropy and interests in education, founding the Carnegie Corporation of New York, Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, Carnegie Institution of Washington, Carnegie Mellon University and the Carnegie Museums of Pittsburgh. Carnegie donated most of his money to establish many libraries, schools, and universities in America, the United Kingdom and other countries, as well as a pension fund for former employees. He is often regarded as the second richest man in history after John D. Rockefeller. Carnegie started as a telegrapher and by the 1860s had investments in railroads, railroad sleeping cars, bridges and oil derricks. He built further wealth as a bond salesman raising money for American enterprise in Europe. He earned most of his fortune in the steel industry. In the 1870s, he founded the Carnegie Steel Company, a step which cemented his name as one of the "Captains of Industry". By the 1890s, the company was the largest and most profitable industrial enterprise in the world. Carnegie sold it in 1901 for $480 million to J.P. Morgan, who created U.S. Steel. Carnegie devoted the remainder of his life to large scale philanthropy, with special emphasis on local libraries, world peace, education and scientific research. His life has often been referred to as a true "rags to riches" story.
Andrew Carnegie was born in Dunfermline, Scotland,
in a typical weaver's cottage with only one main room consisting of
half the ground floor which was shared with the neighbouring weaver's
family. The main room served as a living room, dining room and bedroom. He was named after his paternal grandfather. In
1836, the family moved to a larger house in Edgar Street (opposite
Reid's Park), following the demand for more heavy damask which his
father, William Carnegie, benefited from. His uncle, George Lauder, whom he referred to as "Dod", introduced him to the writings of Robert Burns and such historical Scottish heroes as Robert the Bruce, William Wallace, and Rob Roy.
Falling on very hard times as a handloom weaver and with the country in
starvation, William Carnegie decided to move with his family to Allegheny, Pennsylvania, in
the United States in 1848 for the prospect of a better life. Andrew's
family had to borrow money in order to migrate. Allegheny was a very
poor area. His first job at age 13 in 1848 was as a bobbin boy, changing spools of thread in a cotton mill 12 hours a day, 6 days a week. His starting wage was $1.20 per week. Andrew's father, William Carnegie, started off working in a cotton mill but then
would earn money weaving and peddling linens. His mother, Margaret
Morrison Carnegie, earned money by binding shoes. In 1850, Carnegie became a telegraph messenger boy in the Pittsburgh Office of the Ohio Telegraph Company, at $2.50 per week, following the recommendation of his uncle. His new job gave him many benefits
including free admission to the local theater. This made him appreciate
Shakespeare's work. He was a very hard worker and would memorize all of
the locations of Pittsburgh's businesses and the faces of important
men. He made many connections this way. He also paid close attention to
the telegraph's instruments (he could translate the clicks of the
telegraph before they appeared on the printed tape) and within a year was promoted as an operator. Carnegie's
education and passion for reading was given a great boost by Colonel
James Anderson, who opened his personal library of 400 volumes to
working boys each Saturday night. Carnegie was a consistent borrower
and a "self - made man" in both his economic development and his
intellectual and cultural development. His capacity, willingness for
hard work, his perseverance, and his alertness soon brought forth
opportunities. At work, Carnegie quickly taught himself to distinguish
the differing sounds the incoming telegraph signals produced and
learned to transcribe signals by ear, without having to write them down. Starting in 1853, Thomas A. Scott of the Pennsylvania Railroad Company employed
Carnegie as a secretary / telegraph operator at a salary of $4.00 per
week. At age 18, the youth began a rapid advancement through the
company, becoming the superintendent of the Pittsburgh Division. His
employment by the Pennsylvania Railroad Company would be vital to his
later success. The railroads were the first big businesses in America,
and the Pennsylvania was one of the largest of them all. Carnegie
learned much about management and cost control during these years, and
from Scott in particular. Scott
also helped him with his first investments. Many of these were part of
the corruption indulged in by Scott and the Pennsylvania's president,
J. Edgar Thomson, which consisted of inside trading in companies that
the railroad did business with, or payoffs made by contracting parties
"as part of a quid pro quo," as biographer David Nasaw writes. In 1855, Scott made it possible for Carnegie to invest $500 in the Adams Express,
which contracted with the Pennsylvania to carry its messengers. The
money was secured by the act of his mother placing a $500 mortgage on
the family's $700 home, but the opportunity was only available because of Carnegie's close relationship with Scott. A
few years later, he received a few shares in T.T. Woodruff's sleeping
car company, as a reward for holding shares that Woodruff had given to
Scott and Thomson, as a payoff. Reinvesting his returns in such inside investments in railroad related industries (iron, bridges, and rails),
Carnegie slowly accumulated capital, the basis for his later success.
Throughout his later career, he made use of his close connection to
Thomson and Scott as he established businesses that supplied rails and
bridges to the railroad, offering the two men a stake in his
enterprises.
Before the
Civil War, Carnegie arranged a merger between Woodruff's company and that of George M Pullman, the inventor of a sleeping car for first class travel which
facilitated business travel at distances over 500 miles
(800 km). The investment proved a great success and a source of
profit for Woodruff and Carnegie. The young Carnegie continued to work
for the Pennsylvania's Tom Scott, and introduced several improvements
in the service. In spring 1861, Carnegie was appointed by Scott, who was now Assistant Secretary of War in charge of military transportation,
as Superintendent of the Military Railways and the Union Government's
telegraph lines in the East. Carnegie helped open the rail lines into
Washington D.C. that the rebels had cut; he rode the locomotive pulling
the first brigade of Union troops to reach Washington D.C. Following
the defeat of Union forces at Bull Run,
he personally supervised the transportation of the defeated forces.
Under his organization, the telegraph service rendered efficient
service to the Union cause and significantly assisted in the eventual
victory. Carnegie later joked that he was "the first casualty of the
war" when he gained a scar on his cheek from freeing a trapped
telegraph wire. Defeat of the Confederacy required vast supplies of munitions,
as well as railroads (and telegraph lines) to deliver the goods. The
war demonstrated how integral the industries were to American success. In 1864, Carnegie invested $40,000 in Story Farm on Oil Creek in Venango County, Pennsylvania.
In one year, the farm yielded over $1,000,000 in cash dividends, and
petroleum from oil wells on the property sold profitably. The demand
for iron products, such as armor for gunboats, cannon, and shells, as
well as a hundred other industrial products, made Pittsburgh a center
of wartime production. Carnegie worked with others in establishing a
steel rolling mill and
steel production and control of industry became the source of his
fortune. Carnegie had some investments in the iron industry before the
war. After
the war, Carnegie left the railroads to devote all his energies to the
ironworks trade. Carnegie worked to develop several iron works,
eventually forming The Keystone Bridge Works and the Union Ironworks,
in Pittsburgh. Although he had left the Pennsylvania Railroad Company,
he remained closely connected to its management, namely Thomas A. Scott
and J. Edgar Thomson. He used his connection to the two men to acquire
contracts for his Keystone Bridge Company and the rails produced by his
ironworks. He also gave stock to Scott and Thomson in his businesses,
and the Pennsylvania was his best customer. When he built his first
steel plant, he made a point of naming it after Thomson. As well as
having good business sense, Carnegie possessed charm and literary
knowledge. He was invited to many important social functions —
functions
that Carnegie exploited to his own advantage. Carnegie believed in using his fortune for others and doing more than making money. He wrote:
Carnegie continued his business career; some of his literary intentions were fulfilled. He befriended English poet Matthew Arnold and English philosopher Herbert Spencer as well as being in correspondence and acquaintance with most of the U.S. Presidents, statesmen, and notable writers. Carnegie erected commodious swimming baths for the people of his hometown in Dunfermline in
1879. In the following year, Carnegie gave $40,000 for the
establishment of a free library in Dunfermline. In 1884, he gave
$50,000 to Bellevue Hospital Medical College (now part of New York University Medical Center) to found a histological laboratory, now called the Carnegie Laboratory. In
1881, Carnegie took his family, including his 70 year old mother, on a
trip to the United Kingdom. They toured Scotland by coach, and enjoyed
several receptions en-route. The highlight for them all was a triumphal
return to Dunfermline, where Carnegie's mother laid the foundation
stone of a Carnegie Library for which he donated the money. Carnegie's
criticism of British society did not mean dislike; on the contrary, one
of Carnegie's ambitions was to act as a catalyst for
a close association between the English speaking peoples. To this end,
in the early 1880s, he purchased numerous newspapers in England, all of
which were to advocate the abolition of the monarchy and the
establishment of "the British Republic". Carnegie's charm aided by his
great wealth meant that he had many British friends, including Prime Minister William Ewart Gladstone. In
1886, Andrew Carnegie's younger brother Thomas died at age 43. Success
in the business continued, however. While owning steel works, Carnegie
had purchased at low cost the most valuable of the iron ore fields around Lake Superior.
The same year Carnegie became a figure of controversy. Following his
tour of the UK, he wrote about his experiences in a book entitled An American Four - in - hand in Britain.
Although still actively involved in running his many businesses,
Carnegie had become a regular contributor to numerous magazines, most
notably the Nineteenth Century, under the editorship of James Knowles, and the influential North American Review, led by editor Lloyd Bryce. In 1886, Carnegie wrote his most radical work to date, entitled Triumphant Democracy. Liberal in its use of statistics to make its arguments, the book argued his view that the American republican system of government was superior to the British monarchical system. It gave a highly favorable and idealized view of American progress and
criticized the British royal family. The cover depicted an upended royal crown and
a broken scepter. The book created considerable controversy in the UK.
The book made many Americans appreciate their country's economic
progress and sold over 40,000 copies, mostly in the U.S. In 1889, Carnegie published "Wealth" in the June issue of the North American Review. After reading it, Gladstone requested its publication in England, where it appeared as "The Gospel of Wealth" in the Pall Mall Gazette.
The article was the subject of much discussion. Carnegie argued that
the life of a wealthy industrialist should comprise two parts. The
first part was the gathering and the accumulation of wealth. The second
part was for the subsequent distribution of this wealth to benevolent
causes. The philanthropy was key to making the life worthwhile. Carnegie
was also known to be a great journalist. This came about from his
experience in constantly writing to newspapers and to their editors.
His knowledge in reading newspapers stems from a habit from his
childhood. He
also would go on to publish three books on travel. One of them entitled
"Round the world" he began writing while traveling England and Scotland. In 1898, Carnegie tried to arrange for independence for the Philippines. As the end of the Spanish American War neared, the United States bought the Philippines from Spain for $20 million USD.
To counter what he perceived as imperialism on the part of the United
States, Carnegie personally offered $20 million USD to the Philippines
so that the Filipino people could buy their independence from the United States. However, nothing came of this gesture and the Philippine - American War ensued. Carnegie opposed the annexation of Cuba by the United States and in this, was successful with many other conservatives who founded an anti - imperialist league that included former presidents of the United States, Grover Cleveland and Benjamin Harrison, and literary figures like Mark Twain.
Carnegie
made his fortune in the steel industry, controlling the most extensive
integrated iron and steel operations ever owned by an individual in the
United States. One of his two great innovations was in the cheap and
efficient mass production of steel rails for railroad lines. The second
was in his
vertical integration of all suppliers of raw materials. In the late 1880s, Carnegie Steel was the largest manufacturer of pig iron, steel rails, and coke in the world, with a capacity to produce approximately 2,000 tons of pig metal per day. In 1888, Carnegie bought the rival Homestead Steel Works, which included an extensive plant served by tributary coal and iron fields, a 425 mile (685 km) long railway, and a line of lake steamships. Carnegie combined his assets and those of his associates in 1892 with the launching of the Carnegie Steel Company. By
1889, the U.S. output of steel exceeded that of the UK, and Carnegie
owned a large part of it. Carnegie's empire grew to include 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, through Keystone, supplied the steel for
and owned shares in the landmark Eads Bridge project across the Mississippi River at St. Louis, Missouri (completed
1874). This project was an important proof - of - concept for steel
technology, which marked the opening of a new steel market. In
1901, Carnegie was 66 years of age and considering retirement. He
reformed his enterprises into conventional joint stock corporations as
preparation to this end. John Pierpont Morgan was
a banker and perhaps America's most important financial deal maker. He
had observed how efficiently Carnegie produced profit. He envisioned an
integrated steel industry that would cut costs, lower prices to
consumers, produce in greater quantities and raise wages to workers. To
this end, he needed to buy out Carnegie and several other major
producers and integrate them into one company, thereby eliminating
duplication and waste. He concluded negotiations on March 2, 1901, and
formed the United States Steel Corporation. It was the first corporation in the world with a market capitalization over $1 billion. The buyout, secretly negotiated by Charles M. Schwab (no relation to Charles R. Schwab),
was the largest such industrial takeover in United States history to
date. The holdings were incorporated in the United States Steel
Corporation, a trust organized by Morgan, and Carnegie retired from
business. His steel enterprises were bought out at a figure equivalent
to 12 times their annual earnings — $480 million (approximately $10.3
billion in 2003 prices - according to Gale Virtual Reference
Library) — which at the time was the largest ever personal commercial
transaction. Carnegie's
share of this amounted to $225,639,000, which was paid to Carnegie in
the form of 5%, 50 year gold bonds. The letter agreeing to sell his
share was signed on February 26, 1901. On March 2, the circular
formally filing the organization and capitalization (at
$1,400,000,000 — 4% of U.S. national wealth at the time) of the United
States Steel Corporation actually completed the contract. The bonds
were to be delivered within two weeks to the Hudson Trust Company of Hoboken, New Jersey,
in trust to Robert A. Franks, Carnegie's business secretary. There, a
special vault was built to house the physical bulk of nearly
$230,000,000 worth of bonds. It was said that "...Carnegie never wanted
to see or touch these bonds that represented the fruition of his
business career. It was as if he feared that if he looked upon them
they might vanish like the gossamer gold of the leprechaun. Let them
lie safe in a vault in New Jersey, safe from the New York tax
assessors, until he was ready to dispose of them..." Carnegie spent his last years as a philanthropist.
From 1901 forward, public attention was turned from the shrewd business
acumen which had enabled Carnegie to accumulate such a fortune, to the
public spirited way in which he devoted himself to utilizing it on
philanthropic projects. He had written about his views on social
subjects and the responsibilities of great wealth in Triumphant Democracy (1886) and Gospel of Wealth (1889). Carnegie bought Skibo Castle in
Scotland, and made his home partly there and partly in New York. He
then devoted his life to providing the capital for purposes of public
interest and social and educational advancement. He was a powerful supporter of the movement for spelling reform as a means of promoting the spread of the English language. Among his many philanthropic efforts, the establishment of public libraries throughout the United States, the United Kingdom, and other English speaking countries was especially prominent. Carnegie libraries,
as they were commonly called, were built in many places. The first was
opened in 1883 in Dunfermline. His method was to build and equip, but
only on condition that the local authority matched that by providing
the land and a budget for operation and maintenance. To secure local
interest, in 1885, he gave $500,000 to Pittsburgh for a public library,
and in 1886, he gave $250,000 to Allegheny City for a music hall and
library; and $250,000 to Edinburgh for
a free library. In total Carnegie funded some 3,000 libraries, located
in 47 US states, and also in Canada, the United Kingdom, what is now the Republic of Ireland, Australia, New Zealand, the West Indies, and Fiji. He also donated £50,000 to help set up the University of Birmingham in 1899.
As
VanSlyck (1991) showed, the last years of the 19th century saw
acceptance of the idea that free libraries should be available to the
American public. But the design of the idealized free library was the
subject of prolonged and heated debate. On one hand, the library
profession called for designs that supported efficiency in
administration and operation; on the other, wealthy philanthropists
favored buildings that reinforced the paternalistic metaphor and
enhanced civic pride. Between 1886 and 1917, Carnegie reformed both
library philanthropy and library design, encouraging a closer
correspondence between the two.
The
Broome County Public Library in New York opened in October 1904.
Originally called the Binghamton Public Library, it was created with a
gift of $75,000 from Andrew Carnegie. The building was designed to
serve as both a public library and a community center. He gave $2 million in 1901 to start the
Carnegie Institute of Technology (CIT) at Pittsburgh and the same amount in 1902 to found the Carnegie Institution at Washington, D.C. He later contributed more to these and other schools. CIT is now part of Carnegie Mellon University. Carnegie served on the Board of Cornell University. In 1911, Andrew Carnegie became a sympathetic benefactor to George Ellery Hale, who was trying to build the 100 inch (2.5 m) Hooker telescope at Mount Wilson, and donated an additional ten million dollars to the Carnegie Institution with the following suggestion to expedite the construction of the telescope:
"I hope the work at Mount Wilson will be vigorously pushed, because I
am so anxious to hear the expected results from it. I should like to be
satisfied before I depart, that we are going to repay to the old land
some part of the debt we owe them by revealing more clearly than ever
to them the new heavens." The telescope saw first light on November 2, 1917, with Carnegie still alive. In Scotland, he gave $10 million in 1901 to establish the Carnegie Trust for the Universities of Scotland,
It was created by a Deed which he signed on 7 June 1901, and it was
incorporated by Royal Charter on August 21, 1902. The Trust was funded
by a gift of $10 million (a then unprecedented sum: at the time, total
government assistance to all four Scottish universities was about
£50,000 a year) and its aim was to improve and extend the
opportunities for scientific research in the Scottish universities and
to enable the deserving and qualified youth of Scotland to attend a
university. He was subsequently elected Lord Rector of University of St. Andrews. He also donated large sums of money to Dunfermline, the place of his
birth. In addition to a library, Carnegie also bought the private
estate which became Pittencrieff Park and opened it to all members of the public, establishing the Carnegie Dunfermline Trust to benefit the people of Dunfermline. A statue of him stands there today. He gave a further $10 million in 1913 to endow the Carnegie United Kingdom Trust, a grant making foundation. Carnegie
also established large pension funds in 1901 for his former employees
at Homestead and, in 1905, for American college professors. The latter
fund evolved into TIAA - CREF. One critical requirement was that church related schools had to sever their religious connections to get his money. His interest in music led him to fund construction of 7,000 church organs. He built and owned Carnegie Hall in New York City. Carnegie was a large benefactor of the Tuskegee Institute under Booker T. Washington for African American education. He helped Booker T. Washington create the National Negro Business League. He founded the Carnegie Hero Fund for
the United States and Canada in 1904 (a few years later also
established in the United Kingdom, Switzerland, Norway, Sweden, France,
Italy, the Netherlands, Belgium, Denmark, and Germany) for the
recognition of deeds of heroism. Carnegie contributed $1,500,000 in
1903 for the erection of the Peace Palace at The Hague; and he donated $150,000 for a Pan - American Palace in Washington as a home for the International Bureau of American Republics. Carnegie was honored for his philanthropy and support of the arts by initiation as an honorary member of Phi Mu Alpha Sinfonia Fraternity on October 14, 1917 at the New England Conservatory of Music in Boston, Massachusetts.
The fraternity's mission reflects Carnegie's values by developing young
men to share their talents to create harmony in the world. By
the standards of 19th century tycoons, Carnegie was not a particularly
ruthless man but a humanitarian with enough acquisitiveness to go in
the ruthless pursuit of money; on
the other hand, the contrast between his life and the lives of many of
his own workers and of the poor, in general, 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." Andrew
Carnegie represents to some what is the idea of the American dream. He
was an immigrant from Scotland who came to America and became
successful. He is not only known for his successes but his enormous
amounts of philanthropist works, not only to charities but also to
promote democracy and independence to colonized countries.
Carnegie died on 11 August 1919 in
Lenox, Massachusetts, of
bronchial pneumonia. He had already given away $350,695,653
(approximately $4.3 billion, adjusted to 2005 figures) of his wealth. At his death, his last $30,000,000 was given to foundations, charities, and to pensioners. He was buried at the Sleepy Hollow Cemetery in North Tarrytown, New York.
The grave site is located on the Arcadia Hebron plot of land at the
corner of Summit Avenue and Dingle Road. Carnegie is buried only a few
yards away from union organizer Samuel Gompers, another important figure of industry in the Gilded Age. Poor
maintenance, a reduction in height, and unusually high snowmelt and
heavy spring rains combined to cause the dam to give way on May 31,
1889 resulting in twenty million tons of water to sweep down the valley
causing the Johnstown Flood.
When word of the dam's failure was telegraphed to Pittsburgh, Frick and
other members of the South Fork Fishing and Hunting Club gathered to
form the Pittsburgh Relief Committee for assistance to the flood
victims as well as determining never to speak publicly about the club
or the flood. This strategy was a success, and Knox and Reed were able
to fend off all lawsuits that would have placed blame upon the club's
members. Although
Cambria Iron and Steel's facilities were heavily damaged by the flood,
they returned to full production within a year and a half. By that
time, Carnegie's steel production had outstripped Cambria's. After the
flood, Carnegie built Johnstown a new library to replace the one built
by Cambria's chief legal counsel Cyrus Elder, which was destroyed in
the flood. The Carnegie donated library is now owned by the Johnstown
Area Heritage Association, and houses the Flood Museum. The Homestead Strike was
a bloody labor confrontation lasting 143 days in 1892, one of the most
serious in U.S. history. The conflict was centered on Carnegie Steel's
main plant in Homestead, Pennsylvania,
and grew out of a dispute between the National Amalgamated Association
of Iron and Steel Workers of the United States and the Carnegie Steel
Company. Carnegie
left on a trip to Scotland before the unrest peaked. In doing so,
Carnegie left mediation of the dispute in the hands of his associate
and partner Henry Clay Frick. Frick was well known in industrial circles for maintaining staunch anti-union sensibilities. After
a recent increase in profits by 60%, the company refused to raise
worker's pay by more than 30%. When some of the workers demanded the
full 60%, management locked the union out. Workers considered the
stoppage a "lockout" by management and not a "strike"
by workers. As such, the workers would have been well within their
rights to protest, and subsequent government action would have been a
set of criminal procedures designed to crush what was seen as a pivotal
demonstration of the growing labor rights movement, strongly opposed by
management. Frick brought in thousands of strikebreakers to work the
steel mills and Pinkerton agents to safeguard them. On
6 July, the arrival of a force of 300 Pinkerton agents from New York
City and Chicago resulted in a fight in which 10 men — seven strikers and
three Pinkertons — were killed and hundreds were injured. Pennsylvania
Governor Robert Pattison ordered
two brigades of state militia to the strike site. Then, allegedly in
response to the fight between the striking workers and the Pinkertons, anarchist Alexander Berkman shot
at Frick in an attempted assassination, wounding Frick. While not
directly connected to the strike, Berkman was tied in for the
assassination attempt. According to Berkman, "...with the elimination
of Frick, responsibility for Homestead conditions would rest with
Carnegie." Afterwards,
the company successfully resumed operations with non-union immigrant
employees in place of the Homestead plant workers, and Carnegie
returned to the United States. However, Carnegie's reputation was
permanently damaged by the Homestead events. In
his final days, Andrew Carnegie suffered from bronchial pneumonia.
Before his death on 11 August 1919, Mr. Carnegie had donated $350,695,654 for various causes. The 'Andrew Carnegie Dictum'
illustrates Carnegie's generous nature: Andrew
Carnegie was involved in philanthropist causes, but he kept himself
away from religious circles. He wanted to be identified by the world as
a 'positivist'. He was highly influenced in public life by John Bright. As
early as 1868, at age 33, he drafted a memo to himself. He wrote:
"...The amassing of wealth is one of the worse species of idolatry. No
idol more debasing than the worship of money." In
order to avoid degrading himself, he wrote in the same memo he would
retire at age 35 to pursue the practice of philanthropic giving for
"...the man who dies thus rich dies disgraced." However, he did not
begin his philanthropic work in all earnest until 1881, with the gift
of a library to his hometown of Dunfermline, Scotland. Carnegie wrote "The Gospel of Wealth", an
article in which he stated his belief that the rich should use their
wealth to help enrich society. The following is taken from one of
Carnegie's memos to himself: In 1908, he commissioned (at no pay) Napoleon Hill,
then a journalist, to interview more than 500 wealthy achievers to find
out the common threads of their success. Hill eventually became a
Carnegie collaborator. Their work was published in 1928 after
Carnegie's death in Hill's book The Law of Success and in 1937, Think and Grow Rich.
The latter has not been out of print since it was first published and
has sold more than 30 million copies worldwide. In 1960, Hill published
an abridged version of the book containing the Andrew Carnegie formula
for wealth creation. For years it was the only version generally
available. In 2004, Ross Cornwell published Think and Grow Rich!: The Original Version, Restored and Revised, which restored the book to its original content, with
slight revisions, and added comprehensive end notes, an index, and an
appendix. Witnessing
sectarianism and strife in 19th century Scotland regarding religion and
philosophy, Carnegie kept his distance from organized religion and
theism. Carnegie
instead preferred to see things through naturalistic and scientific
terms stating, "Not only had I got rid of the theology and the
supernatural, but I had found the truth of evolution." Later
in life, Carnegie's firm opposition to religion softened. While he
never professed belief in a particular religion, he did accompany his
wife and daughter to worship at a Presbyterian church. He
also prepared (but did not deliver) an address to St. Andrews in which
he professed a belief in "an Infinite and Eternal Energy from which all
things proceed". Napoleon
Hill wrote that Carnegie asserted the importance of belief in "Infinite
Intelligence", a name Hill used to identify "God" or the "Supreme
Being".
Influenced by his "favorite living hero in public life", the British liberal,
John Bright, Carnegie started his efforts in pursuit of world peace at a young age. His
motto, "All is well since all grows better", served not only as a good
rationalisation of his successful business career but also in his view
of international relations. Despite
his love and efforts towards international peace, Carnegie faced many
dilemmas on his quest for world peace. These dilemmas are often
regarded as conflicts between his view on international relations and
his other loyalties. Throughout the 1880s and 1890s, for example,
Carnegie allowed his steel works to fill large orders of armour plate
for the building of an enlarged and modernized United States Navy;
while he opposed American overseas expansion. He also wrote controversial criticisms of the British class structure which seemed to conflict with his promotion of Anglo - American friendship. On
the matter of American annexation, Carnegie had always thought it is an
unwise gesture for the United States. He did not oppose the annexation
of the Hawaiian islands, Cuba and Puerto Rico, but Carnegie stood still
on his opposition towards the annexation of the Philippines. Because
unlike the Hawaiians, Cubans and Puerto Ricans, the Filipinos were
willing to fight for their independence, Carnegie believed that the
conquest of the islands is a denial of the fundamental democratic
principle, and he also urged William McKinley to withdraw American troops and allow the Filipinos to live with their independence. This act well impressed the other American anti - imperialists, who soon elected him vice president of the Anti - Imperialist League. After
he sold his steel company in 1901, Carnegie was able to get fully
involved into the acts for the peace cause, both financially and
personally. He gave away most of his fortunes to various peace keeping
agencies in order to keep them growing. When his friend, the British
publicist William T. Stead, asked him to create a new organisation for the goal of a peace and arbitration society, his reply was as such: Carnegie
believed that it is the effort and will of the people, that maintains
the peace in international relations. Money is just a push for the act.
If world peace depended solely on financial support, it would not seem
a goal, but more like an act of pity. The creation of the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace in
1910 was regarded as a milestone on the road to the ultimate goal of
abolition of war. Beyond a gift of $10 million for peace promotion,
Carnegie also encouraged the "scientific" investigation of the various
causes of war, and the adoption of judicial methods that should
eventually eliminate them. He believed that the Endowment exists to
promote information on the nations' rights and responsibilities under
existing international law and to encourage other conferences to codify
this law. In
1914, on the eve of the First World War, Carnegie founded the Church
Peace Union (CPU), a group of leaders in religion, academia, and
politics. Through the CPU, Carnegie hoped to mobilise the world's
churches, religious organisations, and other spiritual and moral
resources to join in promoting moral leadership to put an end to war
forever. For its inaugural international event, the CPU sponsored a
conference to be held on August 1, 1914, on the shores of Lake
Constance in southern Germany. As the delegates made their way to the
conference by train, Germany was invading Belgium. Despite its inauspicious beginning, the CPU thrived. Today its focus is on ethics and it is known as the Carnegie Council for Ethics in International Affairs, an independent, nonpartisan, nonprofit organisation, whose mission is to be the voice for ethics in international affairs. The
outbreak of the First World War was clearly a shock to Carnegie and his
optimistic view on world peace. Although his promotion of anti - imperialism and
world peace had all failed, and the Carnegie Endowment had not
fulfilled his expectations, his beliefs and ideas on international
relations had helped build the foundation of the League of Nations after his death, which took world peace to another level. |