The patiently drawn portrait that biographer David Nasaw paints in “Andrew Carnegie” of the steel magnate and legendary philanthropist may have some readers thinking about Bill Clinton.
Like Clinton, Carnegie was a larger-than-life figure who drew tremendous pleasure from the adulation of others; he was always uncomfortable alone. Like Clinton, Carnegie hailed from meager beginnings; he lost his father young, which allowed his loving but controlling mother to hold sway over him until he was well into his 50s. Carnegie even seemed to embrace life the way Clinton still does – with a ravenous hunger for everything it has to offer.
Carnegie fell in love with literature and writing early and he was entranced by business and politics, and cherished the excitement of travel. Innately self-confident and needy at the same time, Carnegie nourished close friendships with the intellectuals and power brokers of his day. He was a fervent activist for world peace, and anti-imperialistic. Always an agnostic, he had a believer’s zeal; his life needed to mean something.
Born a robust little boy in Scotland in 1835, Carnegie came to America with his parents when he was 12. His father fumbled here trying to make a living, which prompted young Andrew to begin working. Employers quickly noticed the bright young boy who was great with numbers and had a natural business savvy.
America was booming with opportunities for those who were not risk-averse and Carnegie was able to figure out a way to make an investment into a business venture that succeeded. Upon receiving his first dividend check, he marveled at the unsung glories of capitalism, amazed “How money could make money, how without any attention from me, this mysterious golden visitor should come …”
Before 30, he was wealthy beyond his wildest imaginings.
But Carnegie was not at peace with himself. His maternal grandfather in Scotland, Tom Morrison, had been an outspoken radical and a staunch advocate for universal suffrage and better conditions for the working man. Always precocious, these were the beliefs he had been weaned on.
Carnegie needed to reconcile his desire to be morally righteous with the ruthless realities of the American marketplace. Having made most of his fortune as a strikebreaker who used tough business practices that have now been outlawed, he began questioning his own tactics, asking, “Why did some individuals and societies succeed, while others failed? Was there any connection between good deeds on earth, material rewards, and eternal salvation? Was there an afterlife?”
Certainly the lavish splendor in which he lived contrasted greatly with the horrific conditions of the men who worked in his steel factories who were forced to endure 12-hour work shifts in grueling conditions for barely a living wage. Reading Herbert Spencer and Charles Darwin helped Carnegie find justification for his tough-minded capitalist pursuits.
Carnegie came to believe that material progress went hand in hand with moral progress and he began to feel more comfortable in his role as a leading industrialist, someone who is making society better than it was before. Carnegie clung to a generic sort of empathy that allowed him to intellectually embrace the masses, but ignore the exhausted sweat on the brows of the men who stood beneath him.
Based on materials not available to any previous biographer – unpublished chapters of his autobiography, love letters between Carnegie and his future wife, diaries of family members and close friends, and his extensive correspondence with presidents Grant, Cleveland, McKinley, and Roosevelt – Nasaw competently builds a credible narrative arc that illustrates the cultural and political forces that shaped Carnegie’s life and times.
Carnegie spent his last decades giving back all the money he earned to charities and colleges and the construction of libraries and museums and research centers. The reader can’t help but be wowed by one man’s ability to accomplish so much.
Elaine Margolin is a freelance book reviewer and essayist in Hewlett, N.Y.
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Andrew Carnegie
By David Nasaw
Penguin, 896 pages, $35
