The Men Who Built America: Andrew Carnegie, the Richest Man in the World

“You didn’t build that”

In our ongoing tibute to the men that built America, today we spotlight Scottish-born Andrew Carnegie (1835-1919), an American industrialist who assembled a fortune in the steel industry and then became a major philanthropist. Carnegie worked in a Pittsburgh cotton factory as a boy before rising to the position of division superintendent of the Pennsylvania Railroad in 1859.

Fond of saying "The man who dies rich, dies disgraced," Through self-dtermination Carnegie aquired a fortune, and then gave it away--Millions of dollars went to support education, a pension plan for teachers, and the cause of world peace. Most famous as a benefactor of libraries, he funded nearly 3,000 around the world. He preached the obligation of the wealthy to return their money to the societies where they made it—then added, says Carnegie's biographer, Joseph Frazier Wall, "a very revealing sentence. He wrote, 'and besides, it provides a refuge from self-questioning.’”

“The Richest Man in the World: Andrew Carnegie,” produced by Austin Hoyt and narrated by David Ogden Stiers, follows Carnegie's life from his impoverished origins in Dunfermline, Scotland, through his business career where he was on the cutting edge of the industrial revolution in telegraphy, railroads, and finally, steel. "The Richest Man in the World" traces the roots of Carnegie's philanthropy to his idealistic, egalitarian father, a skilled weaver displaced by the Industrial Revolution. But Carnegie's mother, Margaret, was a more dominant force in his life. Determined to overcome the shame of poverty and "get to the top," the frugal Margaret often advised young Andrew, "Look after the pennies, and the pounds will look after themselves." He lived with her until she died, and only then married, at age 51.

Carnegie's daughter, Margaret Carnegie Miller, publicly remembered her father as "a kindly, friendly, man. He always wanted to be remembered as one who loved his fellow men." In private, her thoughts were harsher. "Tell his life like it was," she urged his biographer. "I'm sick of the Santa Claus stuff."

Although Carnegie saw himself as a friend of the working man," says Hoyt, "the lives of his workers were not fairy tales where everything turns out all right." According to business historian Harold Livesay, "By the standards of his time, Carnegie does not stand out as a particularly ruthless businessman. But certainly by the standards of ethics and conduct to which we would like to hold businessmen today, he indeed operated extremely ruthlessly."