A man born in Scotland who came to North America to fulfill the American dream to the letter.
Andrew Carnegie was born in 1835 in Scotland. He was the son of very poor workers. His father was a weaver and was unemployed, so in 1847 he was forced to emigrate to USA, more precisely to Allegheny, Pennsylvania.
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There, at At the age of 13 he began his life as a worker, in a cotton weaving factory, where he was in charge of changing the spools of thread for 12 hours a day, six days a week, for the salary of 1 dollar and 20 cents a week. There he began a journey of growth that led him to be the second richest person in American history.
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Homestead strike by Carnegie Steel Company workers.
How Andrew Carnegie, the second richest person in American history, made his fortune
In 1851 he found a job that awakened in him a passion that lasted his entire life. Working as a telegrapher in the Pittsburgh office of the Ohio Telegraph Company, in addition to increasing his salary to $2 a week, he learned about the works of William Shakespeare while delivering messages to a theater. Discovering his new interest, he managed to get to the theater just as the curtain opened, and convince the owner to let him stay to see the play for free.
On the other hand, as a telegrapher he was very intelligent and knew how to quickly distinguish the signals received and retransmit them by ear, without having to write them down. Thanks to this learning, Thomas A. Scott of the Pennsylvania Railroad Company He hired him as a secretary and telegrapher beginning in 1853, with a salary of $4.00 a week.
His sacrifice and intelligence largely explain his professional and economic rise, the other large part is explained by exploitation and shady deals. He knew how to take advantage of illegal acts carried out by his workers and his former employers when doing business to increase his fortune.
He made his first capital by keeping illicit stock from his employers, who had hired a company to make sleeping cars and demanded part of the stock as a bribe. With the help of Thomas Scott, he knew how to invest his profits in strategic companies.
He bought rival companies and discovered a way to economically convert iron into steel on an industrial scale, founding the iconic Carnegie Steel Company. This innovation led him to be a leader in mass production of cheap steel, but he was also part of the businessmen who reduced workers’ wages and crushed unions.
Although he was a ruthless man towards workers, breaking strikes and unleashing a war between workers and bosses, part of his profits at the cost of bloodshed were invested in free public libraries for those who wanted to “advance in life”, as he had made him. He founded 2509 in total.
How much was Andrew Carnegie’s fortune?
According to Forbes Magazine, when he died his fortune was equivalent to 310 billion dollars the present day. Which placed him in second place among the 12 richest Americans in the world, just behind John D. Rockefeller whose assets would be equivalent to 340 billion of dollars today.
