Andrew Carnegie: “Wealth”

Industrialist and philanthropist Andrew Carnegie (1835–1919) is best known as the entrepreneur who launched the expansion of the steel industry in the United States in the late nineteenth century. Carnegie came to the United States from his native Scotland in 1848, and by the outbreak of the Civil War he was the superintendent of the Pittsburgh division of the Pennsylvania Railroad Company. In 1868 Carnegie wrote himself a memorandum declaring his intention to build enough of a fortune not only to live comfortably but also to give away his fortune for the public good. He turned his relationships in the railroad industry to his advantage, and by 1872 he had laid the basis for the Carnegie Steel Company. By the time he wrote the essay “Wealth” in 1889, his company dominated steel production in the United States, and he personally was worth an estimated $350 million (the equivalent of $4.8 billion in today’s dollars).