USA HISTORY

Detailed explanation-1: -Andrew Carnegie sold his steel company, Carnegie Steel, to J.P. Morgan for $480 million in 1901. According to the Carnegie Corporation, Carnegie’s personal peak wealth was about $380 million, or around $309 billion by today’s standard.

Detailed explanation-2: -He was thirteen years old. Since his family needed the money, he immediately went to work in a cotton factory as a bobbin boy. He made $1.20 for working a 70 hour week on his first job. Andrew wasn’t able to attend school, but he was an intelligent and hard working boy.

Detailed explanation-3: -Yet unlike many on Forbes’s Richest Families in America list, Carnegie did not leave his descendants with a stake in the company he helped build. It now trades on the New York Stock Exchange. Ironically, Andrew’s brother Thomas went with a more traditional approach to inheritance.

Detailed explanation-4: -He established the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace and funded the building of the Hague Palace of Peace, which houses the World Court, in the Netherlands. By 1911, Carnegie had given away a huge amount of money–90 percent of his fortune.