Born in the ancient Royal Burgh Dumfermline, Fifeshire, in 1837. His father and mother emigrated to the United States in 1848, settling in Alleghany, Pa.
The senior Carnegie was a master weaver and a man of exceptional intelligence, who was obliged to relinquish his business owing to the development of steam mills with which the handicraftsmen could not hope to compete.
At the age of fourteen young Carnegie began work as a messenger in the office of the Ohio telegraph company; in a short time he became an operator.
When the Pennsylvania Railway was carried to Pittsburgh he received an appointment as train despatcher and rose to be superintendent of the Pittsburgh division of the system.
At the outbreak of the American civil war Carnegie was made Superintendent of military roads.
After the war he went into numerous ventures, in all of which he was eminently successful.
His first big manufacturing venture was the organization of the Keystone Bridge Company. Iron bridges were coming into fashion, and he got the lead everywhere. He soon acquired other manufacturing plants in the iron line.
By 1888 he had control of the Homestead Steel Works and many other plants which were capitalized at about one hundred million dollars.
Some ten or fifteen years ago Mr. Carnegie began to feel the oppression of wealth and its responsibilities and made arrangements by which his employees became sharers in his profits. After getting free of the greater part of the personal care of the properties in which he was the chief owner, Mr. Carnegie has devoted himself largely to philanthropic objects, his gifts being chiefly in the line of building public libraries.
He takes a warm interest in everything relating to telegraphy and telegraph men, and is rather pleased to be remembered as an old-time telegraphist.