A self made man
Andrew 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. He was a "self-made man" in the broadest sense, insofar as it applied not only to his economic development but also to his intellectual and cultural development. His capacity and willingness for hard work, his perseverance, and his alertness, soon brought forth opportunities.
In 1851, he became a telegraph messenger boy in the Pittsburgh Office of the Ohio Telegraph Company, at $2.50 per week. This, to the young Carnegie, seemed a fortune. In addition to providing him with an increase in income, the job also provided him with a lifelong love of William Shakespeare's works. He was frequently required to deliver messages to a theatre, and he often managed to contrive appearing just as the curtain had been raised on a performance.
Using a charm that was to pay even greater dividends in the future, Carnegie was then usually able to convince the theatre's manager to allow him to stay and watch the performance for free. When Carnegie was not at the theatre or improving his mind with a book, he would spend time listening to the telegraph instrument itself. The electric telegraph transmitted its signals along the wires that traversed the nation. When they were received into the telegraph office, they were transcribed into readable script on a long paper tape with the aid of an elaborate machine.
He quickly learned to distinguish the differing sound the incoming signals produced and learned to transcribe it by ear without having to write it down. At the time, Andrew Carnegie was one of only two or three persons so gifted in the entire country. Having learned Telegraphy, he was noted by Thomas A. Scott of the Pennsylvania Railroad Company, who employed him as a secretary/Telegraph operator starting in 1853, at the princely salary of $4.00 per week. Carnegie was eighteen and soon began a rapid advancement through the company, eventually becoming the Superintendent of the Pittsburgh Division.
Carnegie during the Civil War
During the pre-war period, Andrew Carnegie had formed a partnership with a Mr. Woodruff, an inventor. Woodruff's invention was the sleeping car. The great distances transversed by railways had meant stopping for the night at hotels and inns by the railside, so that passengers could rest. The sleeping car sped up travel and helped Americans settle the American west. The investment proved a great success and a source of great fortune for Woodruff and Carnegie.
The young Carnegie, who started work at an early age as a bobbin boy in a cotton mill, and, who was, a few years later, engaged as a telegraph clerk and operator with the Atlantic and Ohio Company, now became the superintendent of the western division of the entire line. In this post, Carnegie was responsible for several improvements in the service. When the American Civil War opened in 1861, he accompanied Scott, the Assistant United States Secretary of War, to the front, where he was "the first casualty of the war" when he pulled up telegraph wires the confederates had buried. He gained a scar on his cheek from when the wire came up too fast and cut him. He would tell the story of that scar for years to come.
Following his good fortune, Carnegie proceeded to increase it still further through fortunate and careful investments. In 1864, Carnegie invested the sum of $40,000 in Storey Farm on Oil Creek, in Venango County, Pennsylvania. In one year, the farm yielded over $1,000,000 in cash dividends, and oil from oil wells on the property sold profitably. Carnegie was subsequently associated with others in establishing a steel rolling mill. Aside from Carnegie's investment successes, he was beginning to figure prominently in the American cause and in American culture.
In the Washington
With the Civil War raging, Carnegie soon found himself in Washington. Carnegie was selected by his boss at the Pennsylvania Railroad Company, Thomas A. Scott, who was now Assistant Secretary of War in charge of military transportation, to join him in Washington. Carnegie was appointed Superintendent of the Military Railways and the Union Government's telegraph lines in the East and was Scott's right hand man. Carnegie, himself, was on the foot plate of the locomotive that pulled the first brigade of Union troops to reach Washington.
Shortly after this, 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. During his work "in the field", Carnegie fell ill and needed treatment for sunstroke.
The Civil War, as so many wars before it, brought boom times to the suppliers of war. The U.S. iron industry was one such. Before the war its production was of little significance, but the sudden huge demand brought boom times to Pittsburgh and similar cities and great wealth to the iron masters. Carnegie had some investments in this industry before the war and, after the war, left the railroads to devote all his energies to the ironworks trade.
Iron works
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 did not totally sever his links with the railroads. These links would prove valuable. The Keystone Bridge Company made iron train bridges, and, as company superintendent, Carnegie had noticed the weakness of the traditional wooden structures. These were replaced in large numbers with iron bridges made in his works. 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 and to the fullest extent.
Carnegie the scholar and activist
Whilst Carnegie continued his business career, some of his literary intentions were fulfilled. During this time, he made many friends in the literary and political worlds. Among these were such as Matthew Arnold and Herbert Spencer as well as being in correspondence and acquaintance with most of the U.S. Presidents, statesmen, and notable writers of the time. Many were visitors to the Carnegie home. Carnegie greatly admired Herbert Spencer, the polymath who seemed to know everything. He did not, however, agree with Spencer's Social Darwinism which held that philanthropy was a bad idea.
In 1881, Andrew Carnegie took his family, which included his mother, then aged 70, on a trip to Great Britain. They toured the sights of Scotland by coach having several receptions en-route. The highlight for them all was a triumphal return to Dunfermline where Carnegie's mother laid the foundation stone of the "Carnegie Library". Andrew Carnegie's criticism of British society did not point to a dislike of the country of his birth; on the contrary, one of Carnegie's ambitions was to act as a catalyst for a close association between the English speaking peoples.
Death of brother
To this end, he purchased, in the first part of the 1880s, a number of 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 Gladstone. In 1886, tragedy struck Carnegie when his young brother Thomas died at the early age of 43. Success in the business continued, however. At the same time as owning steel works, Carnegie had purchased, at low cost, the most valuable of the iron ore fields around Lake Superior. The same year Andrew Carnegie became a figure of controversy.
Following his tour of Great Britain, 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 of articles to numerous serious minded magazines, most notably the Nineteenth Century, under the editorship of James Knowles, and the North American Review, whose editor, Lloyd Bryce, oversaw the publication during its most influential period.
Triumphant Democracy
That year, 1886, Carnegie penned his most radical work to date, entitled Triumphant Democracy. The work, liberal in its use of statistics to make its arguments, was an attempt to argue his view that the American republican system of government was superior to the British monarchical system. It not only gave an overly-favourable and idealistic view of American progress, but made some considerable criticism of the British royal family.
Most antagonistic, however, was the cover that depicted amongst other motifs, an upended royal crown and a broken sceptre. Given these aspects, it was no surprise that the book was the cause of some considerable controversy in Great Britain. The book itself was successful. It made many Americans aware for the first time of their country's economic progress and sold over 40,000 copies, mostly in the U.S.A.
In 1889, Carnegie stirred up yet another hornet's nest when an article entitled "Wealth" appeared in the June issue of the North American Review. After reading it, Gladstone requested its publication in England, and it appeared under a new title, "The Gospel of Wealth" in the Pall Mall Gazette. The article itself was the subject of much discussion. In the article, the author argued that the life of a wealthy industrialist such as Carnegie should comprise two parts. The first part was the gathering and the accumulation of wealth. The second part was to be used for the subsequent distribution of this wealth to benevolent causes.