Mr. Andrew Carnegie, who died on Monday at the age
of eighty-three, was a master of the art of acquiring wealth, and aimed, not without some success, at mastering the more difficult art of spending his wealth wisely. As a boy of twelve, the son of a poor Dunfermline weaver, he worked in an Ohio cotton-mill for a dollar a week. Fifty years later, when he retired from business, his steelworks were yielding him an income of several millions sterling. Other men have achieved similar feats, before and since the days of Croesus. Mr. Carnegie showed his origin- ality by distributing vast sums for public purposes. His innumerable grants for public libraries and church organs here and in America have been most useful. But the work of the Carnegie Institute, which he endowed with five millions, of the Carnegie Trust for the Scottish Universities, and of the United Kingdom Carnegie Trust may prove of the greatest value to many succeeding generations, if their large revenues are wisely administered. It is very easy to criticize Mr. Carnegie as a typical product of the era of industrial expansion in America. We prefer to remember him for his genuine interest in education and in the endowment of research.
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