Title: Andrew Carnegie’s Surprising Legacy - HISTORY
Headings: Andrew Carnegie’s Surprising Legacy
Andrew Carnegie’s Surprising Legacy
Before his death in 1919, steel magnate and philanthropist Andrew Carnegie helped fund the creation of some 2,800 libraries across the world

Content: Andrew Carnegie’s Surprising Legacy - HISTORY
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Updated: Aug 29, 2018
Original: Feb 23, 2017
Andrew Carnegie’s Surprising Legacy
Before his death in 1919, steel magnate and philanthropist Andrew Carnegie helped fund the creation of some 2,800 libraries across the world
Author: Evan Andrews
For Andrew Carnegie, books were an indispensable tool for self-improvement and social uplift. Born poor in Scotland in 1835, the future industrialist immigrated to the United States as an adolescent and settled in Pennsylvania with his family. By age 13, he was already working 12-hour days, first as a bobbin boy in a textile mill and later as a messenger for a telegraph office. With no time to attend school, Carnegie was forced to educate himself by borrowing books from Colonel James Anderson, a wealthy local man who opened his private library to the community’s young workers. Carnegie would later credit Anderson’s free library with helping sharpen his mind and ease the drudgery of his work. “ To him I owe a taste for literature which I would not exchange for all the millions that were ever amassed by man,” he wrote in his autobiography. pinterest-pin-it
A Vanity Fair illustration of Andrew Carnegie. (