Published in Scotland Magazine Issue 8 on 17/5/2003.

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The richest man in the world

WE PROFILE THE DUNFERMLINE WEAVER’S SON TURNED AMERICAN STEEL MAGNATE AND PHILANTHROPIST, ANDREW CARNEGIE

At the age of 65, entrepreneur Andrew Carnegie sold his business, the Carnegie Steel Company, for $480 million, making him the world’s richest man. But let’s begin at the beginning …

Andrew Carnegie was born in Dunfermline, Fife, in 1835, the son of a skilled weaver. When steam-powered looms were introduced in 1847, Andrew’s father was made unemployed. The family moved to Pittsburgh to find work.

Andrew Carnegie, now aged 13, began working as a bobbin boy in a textile mill, earning $1.20 a week. He was soon employed as a clerk. In 1849, he became a messenger in a telegraph office, then a telegraph operator. He next worked for the Pennsylvania Railroad, as personal
telegrapher and assistant to the superintendent of the railroad’s western division, Thomas Scott.

Scott had encouraged Carnegie to make his first financial investment, and when Carnegie’s father died in 1855, the young man took a bank loan which he invested in the Woodruff Sleeping Car Company. This brought in dividends equivalent to more than three times Carnegie’s salary at the time.

He also impressed his superiors at work, and became superintendent of the railroad’s western division.

Carnegie invested in a Pennsylvanian oil company, and continued to invest in various companies, such as Piper and Schiffler, with great success.

In 1865, he resigned from Pennsylvania Railroad in order to restructure the Piperand Schiffler company and run it, with associates, as his own interest: the Keystone Bridge Company. It.....

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By Dominic Roskrow

Section : Remarkable Scots

Page number : 82