Andrew landed his first job at 13 as a bobbin boy changing spools of thread in a cotton mill. He worked over 70 hours a week, making it his mission to remember details and faces of some of the town’s most prominent business men.
Through hard work and time spent educating himself intellectually and culturally, Carnegie climbed the rungs of various corporate ladders. He eventually formed his own steel company and secured numerous other investments.
Later, in his sixties, the profit from the sale of his steel company in 1901 left him with close to 230 million in gold bond notes. The notes were housed in a vault at the Hudson Trust Company in Hoboken, New Jersey for safekeeping. It was reported that Carnegie did not want to visit the vault, which was the accumulation of his life’s work in the steel industry.
He believed that the first third of one’s life should be dedicated to education, the second third to acquiring wealth and the last third to dispersing that wealth to benevolent causes. Carnegie believed that the pursuit of wealth was the cause of illness in the mind, unless the reason behind amassing a fortune was to be used toward the betterment of society.
He died in August of 1919 at the age of 83. Carnegie is one of the top ten wealthiest individuals in history. With his money and time he began numerous foundations, schools, libraries and more.
Andrew Carnegie left us with the following quote:
“People who are unable to motivate themselves must be content with mediocrity, no matter how impressive their other talents.”
