October 26, 2006 | Read Time: 1 minute
NEW BOOKS
Andrew Carnegie
by David Nasaw
In 1868, Andrew Carnegie, then 33 years old, jotted down a note on a scrap of paper: “Make no effort to increase fortune, but spend the surplus each year for benevolent purposes. Cast aside business forever except for others.”
David Nasaw, a history professor at the Graduate Center of the City University of New York, describes the long, eventful life of the charismatic industrialist and philanthropist.
Born poor in Scotland, Mr. Carnegie immigrated to the United States with his family at 13. By 1868, he was worth close to $400,000 — or $75-million today, a fraction of his eventual fortune. Mr. Carnegie retired at 65 in 1901 with $226-million from the sale of U.S. Steel, a sum worth $120-billion in today’s dollars.
But he kept to the resolve he had made to give away the great bulk of his money in his lifetime, and warned his fellow millionaires that “the rich man who abjured the responsibility that came with his wealth — of wisely administering it for the good of the community — did that community a grave disservice,” writes Mr. Nasaw.
Mr. Carnegie, whose philanthropic interests ran from world peace to educating the poor, gave millions of dollars to support the arts, churches, health, higher education, immigrants, and libraries. But “recognizing that the more money he earned, the more he would have to give away,” writes Mr. Nasaw, Mr. Carnegie’s generosity also “encouraged him to be even more ruthless a businessman and capitalist.”
At his death, Andrew Carnegie bequeathed the last $20-million of his fortune to the Carnegie Corporation, a charitable trust, thus “returning his fortune to the larger community where it rightfully belonged.”
Publisher: Penguin Press, 375 Hudson Street, New York, N.Y. 10014; (212) 366-2272; fax (212) 366-2952; http://www.penguinputnam.com; 878 pages; $35; ISBN 1-59420-104-8.
