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ANDREW CARNEGIE, the largest manufacturer of pig iron, steel rails and coke in the world, well deserves a place
among America's celebrated men. He was born November 25, 1835, at Dunfermline, Scotland, and emigrated to the United
States with his father in 1845, settling in Pittsburg. Two years later Mr. Carnegie began his business career by
attending a small stationary engine. This work did not suit him and he became a telegraph messenger with the Atlantic
and Ohio Co., and later he became an operator, and was one of the first to read telegraphic signals by sound. Mr.
Carnegie was afterward sent to the Pittsburg office of the Pennsylvania Railroad Co., as clerk to the superintendent
and manager of the telegraph lines. While in this position he made the acquaintance of Mr. Woodruff, the inventor
of the sleeping car. Mr. Carnegie immediately became interested and was one of the organizers of the company for
its construction after the railroad had adopted it, and the success of this venture gave him the nucleus of his
wealth. He was promoted to the superintendency of the Pittsburg division of the Pennsylvania Railroad and about
this time was one of the syndicate that pnrchased the Storey farm on Oil Creek which cost forty thousand dollars
and in one year it yielded over one million dollars in cash dividends. Mr. Carnegie later was associated with others
in establishing a rolling mill, and from this has grown the most extensive and complete system of iron and steel
industries ever controlled by one individual, embracing the Edgar Thomson Steel Works; Pittsbdrg Bessemer Steel
Works; Lucy Furnaces; Union Iron Mills; Union Mill; Keystone Bridge Works; Hartman Steel Works; Frick Coke Co.;
Scotia Ore Mines. Besides directing his immense iron industries he owned eighteen English newspapers which he ran
in the interest of the Radicals. He has also devoted large sums of money to benevolent and ed ucational purposes.
In 1879 he erected commodious swimming baths for the people of Dunfertnline, Scotland, and in the following year
gave forty thousand dollars for a free library. Mr. Carnegie gave fifty thousand dollars to Bellevue Hospital Medical
College in 1884 to found what is now called "Carnegie Laboratory," and in 1885 gave five hundred thousand
dollars to Pittsburg for a public library. He also gave two hundred and fifty thousand dollars for a music hall
and library in Allegheny City in 1886, and two hundred and fifty thousand dollars to Edinburgh: Scotland, for a
free library. He also established free libraries at Braddock, Pennsylvania, and other places for the benefit of
his employes, He also published the following works, "An American Four in hand in Britain;" ''Round the
World;" "Triumphant Democracy; or Fifty Years' March of the Republic."
FROM:
A Biographical Record
Of Schuyler County, New York
The S. J. Clarke Publishing Company
New York and Chicago 1903.
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