Andrew Carnegie

1835 – 1919

Andrew Carnegie was a Scottish-American steel magnate who built Carnegie Steel into the largest and most profitable industrial enterprise of its era before selling it to J. P. Morgan in 1901 to form U.S. Steel. As owner of the Homestead Works in Pennsylvania he authorised plant manager Henry Clay Frick to break the Amalgamated Association of Iron and Steel Workers in 1892, leading to the Homestead Strike, the deployment of 300 armed Pinkerton agents, and a pitched battle on July 6 that left at least seven workers and three Pinkertons dead. He drove down workers' wages and lengthened shifts to twelve hours across his mills while writing essays on the moral duty of the rich, an arrangement his contemporary critics described as financing libraries with stolen wages.

Last checked: May 10, 2026, 1:06 PM