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Andrew Carnegie: life of the week
00:47:33
David Nasaw introduces Andrew Carnegie, who built a sprawling 19th-century empire from humble beginnings – and explains why his name still looms large in libraries, museums, and debates on wealth
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David Nassau
There.
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Eleanor Evans
Hello and welcome to Life of the Week, where leading historians delve into the lives of some of history's most intriguing and significant figures. From ancient Egyptian pharaohs and medieval warriors to daring 20th century spies.
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David Nassau
How did.
- [02:17]
Eleanor Evans
A man who crushed unions in Gilded Age America come to see himself as humanity's benefactor? In this Life of the Week episode we take a closer look at Andrew Carnegie, one of the so called robber barons who made a fortune as the US expanded westward in the late 19th century. And he was one of the key architects of a specific type of philanthropy that still has echoes today. Guiding us through Carnegie's life is historian and biographer David Nassau, who was speaking to Eleanor Evans.
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As a biographer of the man and as a historian, what first attracted you to Carnegie as a figure.
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David Nassau
You know, I'm embarrassed to say so, but an editor approached me and said, we've done books. There are books about Rockefeller and Morgan. There's not really any good book about Carnegie. Would you be interested in doing it? And I said, well, let me see, and I live in New York. So I took the train to Washington D.C. and I looked through the Carnegie correspondence there and within 10 minutes I knew I wanted to do this. One, because he's a great letter writer. Two, because he's got a sense of humor. Three, because he is, I think, and I don't think this is an exaggeration, the central figure in what we call the Gilded Age, the age of the robber barons, the age of the Moguls, the period in which the United States leaps from being a rural backwater to being an industrial manufacturing powerhouse. What interested me as much as anything else is that the man is a two continent resident. He was always very happy to be referred to as a Yankee Doodle Scotsman. He spent at least half his time in Scotland, the uk, Europe, and becomes one of the first international businessmen. And I think that's very critical for understanding the world economy through the First World War, from the end of the Civil War through the First World War.
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Eleanor Evans
So if it was a little bit of chance that took you to this man's life, it sounds very much like you've stayed there very much through choice. Let's go back to the first continent that features in his life. Can you take us into his early life in Scotland and perhaps we can go as far as how he came to be in the United States?
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David Nassau
Sure. He is born in Dunfermline, little Scottish town across the Firth of Forth from Edinburgh. He visits Edinburgh once in his life as a child to see the Queen. But for the most part he grows up in this little town and it's a weaving town, it's a one industry town. It has a high street and it has lots of what we would think of as shacks in which on the ground floor there is the loom for his father. He goes to school for the briefest of time. There are 60 children to a class. He doesn't get much of a formal education. The family is in economic straits from the moment he's born. And why? Because the weaving industry is in trouble. One factories are beginning to take over. But more importantly, and this I found as a shock, I didn't expect this. Most of the weaving that's done in Dunfamilyn is fine damask tablecloths napkins. And they find their way in large part to the United States, to the East Coast. America's aristocrats, it's wealthy, have to set their table with fine linen. Tablecloths, napkins, doilies. What happens in the 1840s is that the Americans decide that they need their own weaving industry. And they slap tariffs on European imports. In Lyon, in France, which is a major center for fine weaving. And in Dunfermline and through Scotland, suddenly, the demand for goods diminishes, dies, ends. Andra. He's referred to as Andra. Andra, Carnegie's mother, sees into the future. She sees that there's no future for her boys. Dunfermline is a one industry town. That industry is disappearing. She has a relative, an aunt, who lives in Allegheny City, which is today part of Pittsburgh. She raises money, they sell whatever goods they have, and they begin their long journey. In 1848, Andrew is 13. His brother is eight years younger. His mother and father are relatively young, and they have to go along the River Clyde. They get on a ship at Glasgow, the Wiscasset, an old Steamer. They are 42 days on the Atlantic Ocean with very little to eat, with very little fresh water, and everyone except young Andra is seasick. From the moment they get on the ship to the moment they leave, they're in steerage. Of course, they can't afford anything more. They get to New York, they have to take a steamer up the Hudson river to Albany. In Albany, they get off. They get on a canal boat. They go along the Erie Canal to Buffalo. They get on a Lake Erie boat that takes them to Cleveland. And then they spend a week and a half, two weeks on little boats going south from Cleveland to Pittsburgh. Andra has a wonderful time. The family is beset by mosquitoes. It's a frightening journey. But little Andra makes friends with everybody. He never stops talking, he never stops socializing, he never stops learning. And he has a fine journey. One of the things that makes him Andrew Carnegie, and this is, you know, totally weird, is that he's a great traveler. And he will have for the rest of his life no problems traveling back and forth across the Atlantic, where many of his contemporaries regard the trip across the Atlantic with dread. He ends up in Allegheny City, and his father sort of rents a loom but can't make any money. He goes house to house with his goods. Finally, it's decided that Andra, 13 years old, is going to have to go to work. He gets a job with his father in a cotton mill. There's a cotton mill in Pittsburgh. He's a friendly kid. There's a Scottish community. He eventually ends up as a telegraph messenger, delivering telegrams all through Pittsburgh. And he's brilliant. He memorizes the map, so he's the quickest one. He memorizes the faces of all the businessmen who are getting telegrams. They love him. And in his spare time, he learns Morse code. So he quickly climbs the ladder in the telegraph office, is hired for the best job as a telegraph boy, as an operator working for the Pennsylvania Railroad. The Pennsylvania Railroad has just connected Philadelphia and Pittsburgh across the Allegheny Mountains. There's one problem, and this is why they need Andrew Carnegie, the best telegraph operator in the state. There's one track, so in order to prevent crashes from westbound and eastbound trains, you need a telegraph operator who knows exactly where each train is and can say to the eastbound train, pull over. Let the westbound train go through again. He's smart, he's charming, he's personable. He rises up through the ranks of the Pennsylvania Railroad and becomes an assistant to the vice president. And he becomes sort of a bagman. How do you make money in the railroad industry in the mid-1850s? Through corruption. There's no better word for it. What do the railroads need? They need coal. Where are they going to get the coal? Well, the president and the vice president start their own coal company and they sell coal to their railroad. They need someone who's going to be the intermediary. And Andrew Carnegie becomes an officer in a coal company. He becomes an officer in an iron company, building bridges for the Pennsylvania Railroad. He becomes an officer in all of the companies that are owned by the officers of the Pennsylvania Railroad and enrich them by lucrative contracts with the railroad itself. By 30, he's a millionaire and ready to move on.
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Eleanor Evans
You've given us a picture then of a young man who seizes every single opportunity that comes his way. By the sound of it, what's clear is that he's doing it in a very charismatic way. The he engages others. I think it's fair to say, alongside this reputation, a bit of a ruthless streak that he has a reputation for. Where do you think this comes from in the story?
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David Nassau
I mean, one does not become a robber baron and remain an angel. One has to be ruthless and one has to look after one's own income. And from the very beginning, Andra Carnegie, let's think of who this man is. I mean, of all the American robber barons, of the Rockefellers and the Morgans and the Goulds, you pick Any one of them. They all come from lower middle class backgrounds. They all have some kind of an education, they have some kind of family money. Carnegie is the only rags to riches story. He comes from nothing. Nothing. He understands that if he's going to make his way in this new land of America, he's got to be smarter than everybody else and he's got to be one step ahead of everybody else. Let me mention one other thing that I think is important. He's tiny. He's a tiny little man. It's wonderful being a biographer because you make these discoveries at some point. I wonder why he's always wearing a tall hat. Why there are no pictures of him with other people except when they're on stairs and he's sitting on the top stair and everybody is sitting on a stair below him. And I wondered why when he goes on dates in New York City, they go horseback riding, you know, in, in Central Park. And then I looked at his boots and he's got these high boots. I mean he's tiny. He's about 4 foot 10, 4 foot 11. At one point he writes his mother when he's already a millionaire and he goes hiking with a friend, he writes his mother and he says, you know, don't worry about me. I am so and so stone. I translate stone into pounds. He's 110 pounds. A grown man, Husky. 110 pounds. He's tiny. So I think that gives him. He knows he's got another impediment to making it in America and that adds to his, I guess ruthless is the best word for it. He's out for himself and he has to be because nobody else is going to take care of him.
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- [17:15]
Eleanor Evans
See mintmobile.com so he's made his money then by age 30, you've given us a picture of him with both charisma and immense, you know, pride and ruthlessness in his business. I want to turn to an event known as the Homestead Strike, which is in 1892. I wonder if we can go into this a bit. You can give our listeners a bit context around why this happens and what Carnegie's role is in the event and what it does to his reputation.
- [17:40]
David Nassau
Carnegie, he makes his money in a variety of ways. He goes from business to business to business. He eventually discovers through the railroad, and this is no great discovery, that by the 1860s and the 1870s, after the Civil War, the United States of America is moving west, okay? Has its own internal empire, takes over the west, takes land from Mexico, takes land from the Native Americans, okay? There's one problem with moving west, and it's a big problem. It's called the Mississippi River. And in order for the railroads and in order for the nation and in order for goods to move from east to west and west to east, someone has to put bridges over the Mississippi River. Carnegie inserts himself in that process. And he has at that point an iron company and he has a bridge making company. And he is a brilliant bond salesman. The only way that he is going to get the money and the Americans are going to get the money to build those bridges is by selling bonds. Where there is money in England, in Germany and France, but more in London, which is the center of finance while he is in Europe and while he is in England, he visits the most advanced steel plant, Bessemer's plant, And he discovers that as the railroad connects the country from east to west and from west to east and from north to south, it can no longer rely on iron for the rails. Iron is brittle. Iron breaks steel. Rails are going to cost a ton more, but they're going to last forever. And in the late 1870s, the early 1880s, he moves from iron into steel. He gives up all his other businesses and with junior partners he builds a variety of steel plants. He is benefited because Congress has put a huge tariff on steel which locks out the British, locks out the Germans, locks out the French, and gives American steel makers a giant heads up. He makes millions upon millions and he puts all that money back into his company, which is then called Carnegie Brothers. It's with his younger brother Tom, eventually, as Carnegie Brothers. And then Carnegie Steel gets bigger and bigger and bigger and bigger and bigger. Carnegie understanding what his steel mills are doing to Pittsburgh, what they're doing to the air, what they're doing to the people. He leaves Pittsburgh and he moves to New York. And in New York, he looks over the balance sheets of his steel mills and he discovers that one of his major costs is labor. And how is he going to continue to make millions and to be the top steel manufacturer to outdo Bethlehem Steel and its competitors, it's by cutting labor costs. But before you can cut labor costs, you got to destroy the unions which protect the workers. His workers in his plants are working 12 hours a day, six and a half days a week. The unions are fighting against him for health and safety measures to reduce the work week and for decent living wages. And from the late 1880s into the 1890s, he goes after the unions. He does it by deputizing his chief assistant, Henry Frick, his junior partner. Henry Frick, who is infinitely more ruthless than he. Carnegie, by this point has a reputation. He loves to be in the newspapers. He loves to give speeches. He wants to be known as a progressive employer, American model. So he leaves to Frick, who is still in Pittsburgh, the job of destroying the Union. In 1892, he leaves for Scotland, as he does every summer, to spend three, four months in Scotland. And as he leaves, he leaves instructions with Frick. Take care of business. The workers are going to go on strike. Use that as an excuse to break the union. Frick breaks the union. Carnegie knows exactly what's going on. But he's in Scotland. He says, I had nothing to do with this. He doesn't go after Frick directly in the public, but he thinks he's going to be, you know, he's going to be okay. And in large part, he sails through this moment. It is a vicious strike. Frick calls in the Pinkertons, which are an armed private detective agency. There are battles, people are killed, property is destroyed. Frick is nearly assassinated and Carnegie is an ocean away. He comes back to the United States and has very little to say about what had happened at Homestead. He publicly backs Frick, but privately says, I would have done it differently. Would he have? I don't know. By the middle 1890s, Carnegie has already begun to move in a new direction. And this is why I find this guy so absolutely fascinating. Carnegie understands from the very beginning that he has not earned the millions of dollars in his bank account by himself. He's a tiny little man. He doesn't dig the coal, he doesn't convert the coal into coke, the fuel, he doesn't bring the iron ore down from Michigan. He's not a pick and shovel man, he doesn't run the furnaces. He's not a chemist, he's not an engineer. And he understands that without the increase in population in the United States, without the growth of the railroads, without intense immigration, and without this army of people who works for him, he'd be nothing. And very early on, he begins to see himself as a trustee for the larger community. He reads Herbert Spencer and Herbert Spencer says, to the fittest go the spoils. And Carnegie understands that he's one of the fittest. And that means that this money has come to him for a purpose. And that purpose is that he is going to spend that money to build American cities, to build American railroads, and then with the excess profits to give it back to the larger community. He invents almost single handedly American philanthropy, which eventually becomes a model for philanthropy across the globe. And he says, I'm doing this, I'm doing this. I'm not giving a gift to the world or to the people of Pittsburgh. I'm giving back to you what you need. There's this moment in the mid-1890s. Homestead has sort of been forgotten. He arrives in Pittsburgh with his boots, his top hat. There's a celebration. At the end of this celebration, he gets up to speak and he looks out at the crowd. And the crowd is assembled hierarchically. The dignitaries and the wealthy are in the front, and all the way in the back are the representatives of the working people. And he looks to the back of this huge gathering and he says, I see among you there are many working people. Some of you have worked for me or do work for me. And he said, and you're asking yourself now, you're saying, Mr. Carnegie, why instead of building this museum, didn't you raise our wages, make our working conditions better? He says, but I tell you, he said, what would you have done with higher wages? Maybe bought a better grade of beef for your family? Maybe spent more time in the bar drinking? He said, I Know what you need? You need libraries, you need museums, you need concert halls. And that's what I'm giving to you. And this is his outlook. It is autocratic. It is sort of pseudo faux Democratic. And he knew from the very beginning that he was going to give away his fortune. When he gets married, he writes, and as a biographer, it was gold to find his prenup agreement. His wife signs a piece of paper in which he says, I know I'm marrying a very, very, very rich man. And I know he's not going to leave any money to me. He's going to give it all away. And I celebrate that and I'm going to join him in doing this. And then, if it may, there's a third act. Act One is making his money. Act Two is giving it away. And then act three is becoming a peacemaker. Carnegie understands the same gift that makes him see into the future and understand how steel is going to be important. Makes them see into the future and understand that the British and the Germans are headed for war eventually, that they're building bigger and bigger destroyers, that they're competing for land in colonies in Africa. And this is going to end badly. Carnegie was an opponent of the Spanish American War. He didn't want the United States to get involved in having its own colonies in Cuba, Puerto Rico, the Philippines. He's against the war. And he decides early, almost, when he retires in 1900 and sells his business to Morgan JP Morgan, the only man rich enough to buy it, that he's going to devote his life to peace. And he starts organizations and he devotes his life to Preventing World War I, the Great War, from breaking out.
- [29:52]
Eleanor Evans
What sort of influence is he able to deploy? What sort of levels of US Politics is he able to access?
- [29:58]
David Nassau
Carnegie has given money to the Republican Party from the very beginning. It's a business expense. And he becomes a buddy of President Roosevelt, Theodore Roosevelt. Roosevelt becomes president and the business community is scared that this guy's a radical. He's against monopolies, he's against trusts. So Teddy Roosevelt loves nothing better than to parade, than to have dinner in the White House with Andrew Carnegie and have Carnegie come out and say, Roosevelt is good for business. He's my president. He's your president. He thinks, Carnegie, that he can translate his friendship and his political support and his political donations to the Republicans and Roosevelt into some sort of influence. He's wrong, Deadly wrong. When Roosevelt leaves office, Roosevelt wants to go to Africa on a safari and kill animals, which he does. He kills hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of animals in Africa. But he needs money for his safari. And Carnegie makes a deal with him. Carnegie says to Roosevelt, I'll pay for your safari, but when you come back, you've got to do the real work. And the real work is you've got to bring together the King of England and the German Kaiser to sign an arbitration treaty in which each side says that we pledge to peacefully settle any disputes between us, that Germany and Great Britain will never go to war. And once these two nations have signed this agreement, then we'll get the French and the Italians and the Russians and everybody else in Europe to sign the same side of agreements. And I will build a peace palace in the Hague, which he does, which will be the center for this arbitration. And there will be no more war. War will be abolished. War is the central feature of barbarism, and we are civilized people. Roosevelt says, fine, pay for my safari. And then Roosevelt betrays him and Carnegie. When he understands that Roosevelt isn't going to do his bidding, he shifts his allegiance to Roosevelt. Successful William Howard Taft, the next president. And he spends his life holding meetings, speaking to groups, writing pamphlets, writing books. He is regarded in the press as this silly little man, and he's called a fool for peace. And he says, yes, I am a fool for peace. Act three of the story of Andrew Carnegie ends tragically for the world. And for him, World War I breaks out. Carnegie is in Scotland, as he always is during the summer, and he is dismayed, frightened, disgusted. And why? Because all the people around Skibo, his estate, who work for him are delighted to go off to war. They don't have to be drafted. They enlist. He takes the first boat he can back to the United States. And he goes immediately to the new president, Woodrow Wilson, Carnegie. And he says to Wilson, you have to intervene. Please. You're the only one who can do it. Bring both sides together. And Wilson says, it's too late. It's too late. And Carnegie then goes into what we can only, I guess today call a nervous breakdown. He stops talking, he stops reading, he stops writing letters, communicating to his friends, to his wife, to his daughter. His wife moves him to Great Barrington, Massachusetts. He can't anymore, spend his summers in Scotland. For the first time in his life, for the years of the war, he's stuck in the United States and incommunicado this man who could never shut his mouth. He talked so much that his wife worked out hand signals when he was at the dinner table with other people at dinner parties to shut him up. This is a man who could never stop writing in newspapers, in journals, in magazines, or giving speeches, or communicating with his friends and his enemies in letters. He goes silent and he remains silent to the end of the war. When the war comes to an end, he communicates again with Woodrow Wilson and he says, I beg of you to follow through on your plans for a League of Nations. And he says, and I offer you my peace palace at the Hague for the negotiations. Wilson thanks him and within a year, Carnegie is dead.
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Eleanor Evans
His final act then, is a poignant one for certain, given that it's wrapped up in so many years of conflict globally that caused him so much distress. Before we go into his abiding legacy, you mentioned at the top of the interview his good sense of humour that you found through looking at his many letters. Do you have any favorite examples of this?
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David Nassau
Yeah, I've written about a lot of big, rich, powerful men. The one that I want to be at the dinner table with and spend time with is. Is Andrew Carnegie. Because he was. He was just a lot of fun. The guy, he would love to, you know, he would tell stories, he would dance jigs. This is why his sort of breakdown and retreat into silence during the war is so uncharacteristic. He never. He had this optimistic streak. He always believed in progress, that the world was getting better and better. That was his motto. Things get better. He believed in progress. He believed that tomorrow would be a better day. He believed in evolution, evolution from barbarism to civilization. And there's something for the biographer inviting about that. He kept up his friendships with his childhood cousin and with his friends in Britain. He would write letters once a week. He would take Sundays off and write letters. And I'll tell you one story that made me sort of like this guy. Despite his ruthlessness and his brutality towards his workers. At one point, he's in New York and a young man visits him. And the young man comes to Carnegie's office, which is in his residence, the Carnegie mansion on Fifth Avenue. Not a very big mansion compared to Frick's and everybody else's, but a mansion nonetheless, and comes to his house and the young man says to Carnegie, you know, you're my model. I want to be exactly like you. He said, I'm the first man in the office. Every morning I open the door and I'm there an hour before any of my workers come into the office. He said, and I work all day. And he said, I'm the last one to leave. And Carnegie looks at him and he says, well, you Must not be a very good businessman if. If you have to be there all day. He said, there are other things to do with your life. He said, if you're efficient, work in the morning and do other things. That's one story he's always attuned to the people, to his family and to the people he works with and to his communities.
- [38:52]
Eleanor Evans
On that note, I wonder if we can turn to just a few of the things that, since his death, have come to bear his name. What did some of his money pay for and what do you think he would make of his sprawling legacy today?
- [39:05]
David Nassau
One of the things, One of his great failures in life, and he wrote about this. It's in his correspondence. His great failure in life before World War I, when he retires, is that he's determined he's going to give away all his money himself. Because if he was smart enough to make it, then he's going to be smart enough to give it away for the greatest benefit to the greatest number of people. He's defeated by compound interest because he gets all this money, creates a bank for himself in New Jersey, and he can't give it away fast enough because it keeps earning interest. He gives it away. Gives it away. Looks at his bank account, and there's still a great sum there. Finally, one of his lawyers and his Elihu Root, who is his number two man, comes to him and says, it's okay, it's okay. He said, we'll set up a corporation, and that corporation will continue to give away your money after your death, and you just write what you want. And Carnegie sort of is still disappointed that he can't give it all away, but he creates a philanthropic corporation called the Carnegie Corporation. And then he creates a number of other extraordinary institutions or corporations. The Endowment for Peace. When he learns that college professors don't have pensions, he sets up this extraordinary corporation that gives colleges the money to give pensions to their professors, with one proviso that he will not give to a college that has a church connection. Any college that reserves seats on its board of directors or makes sure that its president has to be a member of a different denomination or chooses to express it. Professors by religion, they don't get any money. Dartmouth College holds out for a while, but eventually it has to give in. He continues to give money to libraries, but what's amazing about him is not only does he create philanthropy, but he creates the private public partnerships that now characterize much of philanthropy. He does not give any money to buy books for libraries. He will only build a Building in a town where the town officials, the town councilors, the aldermen, the mayor write a written statement in which they promise that out of tax monies, they will support the library once it's built. They will staff it, they will maintain it, they will keep the books and buy the books. And if the town isn't willing to do that, if the leaders of the town aren't willing to do that, they don't get a Carnegie Library. I mean, I could go on and on. One of his most extraordinary philanthropies is he wants people to have good music. He's not an aficionado of classical music or good music, but he thinks the civilized people have to understand music. Well. There are no phonographs, there are no radios. Ordinary people, working people, can't afford tickets to concert halls. So what does he do? Everybody goes to church on Sunday. So he gives organs to churches across the country so that when you go to church, you can hear good music before and after and during the service. He creates a series of philanthropic institutions that remain in place today, not only in the United States, but in the UK and in Scotland. And one of the things he does is he wants to celebrate heroes. He thinks what's wrong with European civilization and American civilization is that we only regard as heroes people who have been in war soldiers. Carnegie creates hero commissions all over the world. And their job is to reward citizens who have saved children by jumping into rivers and saving drowning children or going into fires. And he will not reward soldiers for their heroism, but he rewards citizens for their heroism. And these hero commissions are still in place today and doing remarkable work.
- [44:24]
Eleanor Evans
You've given us a sense then of a man who had a very clear way in which the world should work. And he did his very best to lay the foundations for how his wealth could help that going forwards beyond his lifetime. Feels like we've barely scratched the surface today with his broad life. But, David, are there any closing thoughts you'd like to leave us with in terms of Carnegie's life or legacy before we say our goodbyes?
- [44:50]
David Nassau
The one thing that I think is very important is that Carnegie was a prideful man. But I can't emphasize enough his commitment to giving away his money, his gospel of wealth. He was probably the most unpopular, disliked and despised millionaire billionaire of his time because he said over and over again to his fellow millionaires, look, you didn't make this money by yourself. You made it as part of a community. You are the trustee for this wealth and it is your responsibility to give it back and to give it back to the people and to consult with the people to give it back to towns which are willing to support libraries, figure out what the people need and give it back. So there is this lack of hubris, this understanding of not a benevolent, but a capitalism that is communitarian, I think, is something that we have to hold on to and we have to remember the wealthy among us have a responsibility, and they have to take that serious.
- [46:24]
Eleanor Evans
That was David Nassau, an author, biographer and historian who specializes in the cultural, social and business history of early 20th century America. His biography of Andrew Carnegie was first published in 2006. He was speaking to Eleanor Evans. Thanks for listening to today's Life of the World Week. Be sure to join us again next time to learn about another fascinating figure from the past.