Andrew_Carnegie

Andrew Carnegie One of the captains of industry of 19th century America, Andrew Carnegie helped build the formidable American steel industry, a process that turned a poor young man into one of the richest entrepreneurs of his age. Later in his life, Carnegie sold his steel business and systematically gave his collected fortune away to cultural, educational and scientific institutions for "the improvement of mankind." Carnegie was born in Dunfermline, the medieval capital of Scotland, in 1835. The town was a center of the linen industry, and Andrew's father was a weaver, a profession the young Carnegie was expected to follow. But the industrial revolution that would later make Carnegie the richest man in the world, destroyed the weavers' craft. When the steam- powered looms came to Dunfermline in 1847 hundreds of hand loom weavers became expendable. Andrew's mother went to work to support the family, opening a small grocery shop and mending shoes. "I began to learn what poverty meant," Andrew would later write. "It was burnt into my heart then that my father had to beg for work. And then and there came the resolve that I would cure that when I got to be a man." An ambition for riches would mark Carnegie's carnegie, andrew, steel, carnegie's, years, later, world, war, one, morgan, man, life, industry, worked, work, scott, new, much, money, iron, family, away, andrew's, andrew, wrote, turned, time, take, richest, railroad, pittsburgh, pennsylvania, over, fortune, father, business, young, workers, way, watch, two, took, tom, threw, telegraph, spend, small, scotland, saw, said