Andrew Carnegie

On November 25, 1835, in Dunfermline, Scotland, Andrew Carnegie was born into a weaver's family strained by industrial change. After immigrating to Allegheny, Pennsylvania, in 1848, he worked first as a bobbin boy and then as a telegraph operator for the Pennsylvania Railroad. Railroad management under Thomas A. Scott taught him how finance, transport, and technology could be combined for industrial expansion.

Carnegie invested in iron, bridges, and railroads before building Carnegie Steel into the dominant steel enterprise of the 1880s and 1890s. The Homestead Strike of 1892 revealed the bitter labor politics behind that success, even as new mills used the Bessemer process to transform production. In 1901 he sold his company to J. P. Morgan, helping create United States Steel, the largest corporation in the world at the time.

Carnegie's wealth later flowed into libraries, universities, and foundations that reshaped public education and philanthropy. The labor conflict at Homestead and the philanthropic ideal in The Gospel of Wealth remained central reference points in debates over monopoly, inequality, and industrial responsibility.