The story of Andrew Carnegie, a poor immigrant boy, who became one of America's leading industrialists and who, through the wise disposition of his enormous wealth, enriched the cultural life of the world and particularly the country of his adoption.
Andrew Carnegie was born in Dunfermline, Scotland, to son of a weaver whose cottage looms had been silenced by the growth of textile mills. When Andrew was thirteen, his father decided to immigrate to America and borrowed twenty pounds, passage money to Pennsylvania. The family settled in Alleghany, in a Scottish community, and young Andrew got a job in a local cotton factory at $1.50 a week. Twenty years later, when he was not yet thirty-five, his annual income was $50,000 a year.
He founded a great steel empire and amassed great wealth which he used to endow colleges, libraries, museums and educational institutions. The Carnegie Library in Pittsburg, the Carnegie Institute in Washington D.C., the sixty-eight branches of the New York Public Library, the Brooklyn Library, and thousands of libraries in thousands of cities owe their existence to Andrew Carnegie's love of books and reading. Carnegie funds built New York's music center, Carnegie Hall. Many colleges in this country and four leading universities in his native Scotland received generous endowments from Carnegie. He established pension funds for teachers in the United States and Canada, and during his lifetime gave away more than three hundred and fifty million dollars for benevolent purposes.
Andrew Carnegie never forgot he had been a poor boy, the son of a weaver. His principles were sincerely democratic, and the cultural legacy he left to the world continues through the Carnegie Foundation which distributes gifts to schools, colleges, libraries and other institutions of learning and research.
—from the dust jacket
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