#2 Andrew Carnegie

Age: 83yrs (Died: 11th August 1919)

Birth Place: Dunfermline, Fife, Scotland, UK

Industry: Steel Tycoon

Influence: Pioneered many manufacturing processes.

Net Worth: £298.3 billion

Why they made the list…

Andrew Carnegie was born into a typical lower-class family in Scotland, and lived in a weavers cottage; a very small house. The main room served not only as the living quarters but also the dining room as well as the bedroom for the family. His family were suffering from near starvation and poverty when William; his father, emigrated the family to Allegheny, Pennsylvania in the USA. The area in which they lived was very poor but better than their previous community in Fife. The first job he had was that of a bobbin boy where he helped change spools for 12hrs each day. Feeling this wasn’t the career for him he went on to become a telegraph messenger for $2.50 per week; his job came with a couple of perks too, such as gaining free entry to the local theatre. He soon progressed to $4.00 per week at the age of 18yrs and through hard work and rapid development Andrew climbed swiftly the ranks. Eventually he became an investor, investing the money he had saved over the years into Adams Express Company a messenger service.

Carnegie later received shares in a car business after helping to safeguard the shares of another business for a friend; he used this to his advantage and reinvested all his money into the railway industry. During the civil war Carnegie made a fortune through investments he had made; one of which had him investing $40,000 of his own money into Story Farm; a creek rich in oil. By the end of the year the investment had paid of in dividends to the tidy sum of $1 million, as well as more profits coming in from the petrol and oil goods. After the civil war had finished Carnegie gave $40,000 to help build a library in his native Dunfermline, he also gave $50,000 of his money to a hospital college to help teach more nurses and save more lives. Now an investor in both oil and steel Carnegie was becoming very wealthy, and decided to write his first book which sold over 40,000 copies. His writing style and intelligence helped Carnegie become known as a great author and journalist which helped him earn another hefty fortune in doing so. By 1898 Carnegie was worth more than $20 million and famously offered $20,000,000 to buy the Philippines from Spain in a bid to allow them independence. By the time of his death in 1919, Carnegie had become famous for his investments, his oil his writings and of course his entrepreneurial streak. With the money he made from all his investments he died a very wealthy man his net worth being $350,695,653, today that figure would be nearly $300 billion.