Andrew Carnegie

(1835 - 1919)

Immigrant bobbin boy at age twelve in 1848 and superintendent of the Pittsburgh railway eleven years later, Andrew Carnegie built the first major American steel plants in the 1870s, eventually selling his company to J.P. Morgan for $250 million in 1901. Over the course of the next eighteen years, Carnegie gave away $350 million—almost the whole of his fortune—to the philanthropic work of building libraries and promoting the cause of international peace.