The Great Idea

Abstract

Andrew Carnegie (November 25, 1835–August 11, 1919) was a Scottish immigrant who epitomized the American Dream during its Gilded Age. He oversaw an immense expansion of both the transportation and steel industries in the United States which allowed a new America to overtake his former homeland of Great Britain as the world’s largest economy. Carnegie achieved his remarkable success through the adoption of a new and distinctly American model of entrepreneurship and free markets. In turn, Andrew Carnegie went on to develop a philanthropic philosophy which he chronicled in his 1889 article that was later reprinted and commonly called The Gospel of Wealth.¹