DEATH OF CARNEGIE

Gisborne Times, Volume LI, Issue 5248, 13 August 1919, Page 5

DEATH OF CARNEGIE

UNEXPECTED END OF LAIRD OP SKIBO. United Press Association—Copyriuht. Australian and N.Z. Oabla Association. •NEW YORK, Aug. 11. Mr. Andrew Carnegie died at Lenox, Massachusetts, from bronchial pneumonia, after three days’ illness. His daughter 'was unable to arrive before his death, which wa s unexpected.

RICHEST MAN IN BRITISH EMPIRE.

Mr. Andrew Carnegie was bom in Dnmferline, Scotland, on November ! 15, 1835. In 1848 he went with his ; family to America, where he was first' employed as weaver’s assistant in a cotton factory, and then as a telegraph messenger boy in the Pitts-" burg office of the Ohio Telegraph Company. Shortly after he entered the employ of the Pennsylvania Railroad Company as a telegraph operator, and advanced by promotion until lie became superintendent of the department. The next step in the multi-millionaire’s remarkably successful career was destined to gain tor him the nucleus of his fortune. He joined Mr. Woodruffe, inventor of the sleeping car, and aided him in the organisation of the Woodruffe Sleeping Car Co. Careful investments in oil lands then increased his means, and during the period of the Civil War, which broke out shortly afterwards, he served as superintendent of the Government telegraph 'lines in the East. Consequent upon the termination of the campaign, Mr. Carnegie turned his attention to the* development of ironworks of various kinds, and established at Pittsburg the Keystone Bridge Works and Union Ironworks. From then on he began to become a financial power in the country, and as a further enterprise introduced the Bessemer process of steel-making.- This-was in 1868, and a few years later he became principal owner of the Homestead and Edgar Thompson Steel Works, and other large plants, such as Carnegie, Phipps, and Co..' and Carnegie Bros, and Co. In 1889 his interests were consolidated in the Carnegie Steel Co., which in 1901 wa» merged in the United States Steei Corporation, when he retired from business. ;

Mr. Carnegie was a noted philanthropist, and had given libraries in many towns in Britain, the Dominions," and the United States. Large sums were also donated by him during his lifetime to a great number of other benefactions-. He has been grafted the freedom of fifty-three cities in Great Britain and Ireland, and had the distinction of being the wealthiest man in the British Empire, his estimated fortune -being at th© time of his death £100,000,000. Among the millionaire’s leading gifts to British institutions is the grant of £2,000,000 to the Scottish Universities to pay the fees of deserving poor students-. He also provided a permanent building at The Hague for the Court of Arbitration, which was opened in 1913. Numerous honors were bestowed upon liim by various countries and republics, and he is said to have given away during his lifetime no less a sum than £30,000,000. His colossal fortune is inherited by his only child, Margaret, 22 years of age, who was married in April last to Ensign Miller.