Andrew Carnegie had a very large impact on the making of America. He was born on November 25, 1835, and died on August 11, 1919. Carnegie had a wife, Louise Whitfield Carnegie, and a daughter, Margaret Carnegie Miller. In the early stages of Carnegie’s life, he wasn’t very wealthy, in fact, he was the complete opposite. By age 54, he had turned his life around with the help of his invention of steel. This made him one of the wealthiest men on Earth, of his era.
At age 12, Andrew Carnegie could not go to school because of his family’s financial problems. He began working for John Scott as a mailboy. Scott saw Carnegie’s potential and took him under his wing. By age 21, he had worked his way up the corporate ladder to the president of John Scott’s railroad company. John Scott gave him the difficult task of building a bridge across the Mississippi River. After going to various contractors and engineers, it was believed that the task at hand was nearly impossible.
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He went to Henry Bessemer, a German scientist, who had invented a way of introducing iron to carbon more efficiently. Carnegie could produce a steel railroad tie in 15 minutes, rather than the average 2 weeks. Taking this invention back to the United States, Carnegie built a bridge spanning the Mississippi River and thus creating structural steel.
After having a very successful life with Carnegie Steel, he then sold his company to JP Morgan for $480 million. With this deal, it made Andrew Carnegie the richest on Earth at that time. With his new wealth, Carnegie devoted himself full-time to philanthropy. After Carnegie took on philanthropy, he eventually gave away more than $350 million, most of this money was put towards building 2,509 Andrew Carnegie libraries within various locations among the United