For Andrew Carnegie, every action was a doorway to opportunity.

Carnegie (1835-1919) was born in Dunfermline, Scotland, but when his father's weaving business failed in the late 1840s, the 13-year-old Carnegie and his family emigrated to the U.S.

As the Carnegies passed through Castle Gardens, just outside New York City, immigration officials encouraged them to head to the young Pennsylvania city of Pittsburgh.

Once there, Carnegie's dad went to work in a cotton factory and got young Andrew a job as a bobbin boy for $1.20 a week (a little over $30 in 2005 dollars). In the factory, bobbin boys brought holders to be loaded onto spindles, then removed them once the yarn was wound onto them. They also performed other menial tasks.

It was depressingly hard work. Carnegie and his father arrived at the factory each morning before dawn and worked until after sunset.

"The hours hung heavily upon me, and in the work itself I took no pleasure," Carnegie wrote in his autobiography, which was published in 1920. "But the cloud had a silver lining, as it gave me the feeling that I was doing something for my world — our family."

At 16, he was his family's chief breadwinner. By his mid-30s, he owned stakes in more than half a dozen firms. At his death, he'd become one of history's most successful capitalists and one of its biggest philanthropists.

"I have made millions since," Carnegie noted. "But none of those millions gave me such happiness as my first week's earnings."

The young man's diligence soon caught the eye of John Hay, who owned a bobbin-making factory and offered him $2 a week.

Carnegie hated his new job operating a small steam engine and firing the boiler, in part because he was terrified he'd make a mistake. It worried him so much, he had nightmares about it. His determination was greater than his fear; his family desperately needed the money, so he stayed.

"My hopes were high, and I looked every day for some change to take place," Carnegie later wrote. "What it was to be I knew not, but that it would come I felt certain if I kept on."

That's exactly what happened. One day Hay, who had poor penmanship, asked Carnegie, who had good penmanship, to help him pay his bills. Carnegie eagerly obliged and quickly became the man's clerk.

Always on the lookout for a leg up, Carnegie next took a job as messenger delivering telegrams for the Atlantic & Ohio Telegraph Co. in Pittsburgh, owned by Henry O'Reilly.

Climbing The Ladder

It would change his life.

"I was lifted into paradise, yes, heaven, as it seemed to me with newspapers, pens and sunshine about me," Carnegie later wrote. "There was scarcely a minute in which I could not learn something or find out how much there was to learn and how little I knew. I felt that my foot was upon the ladder and I was bound to climb."

Carnegie soaked up every bit of information he could.

"As the steel pen embossed the dots and dashes of the Morse alphabet on a narrow strip of paper — an electric current moving the pen — the boy learned of international, national and local happenings," Carnegie biographer Peter Krass wrote in his book "Andrew Carnegie."

"Most important, at age 14, Andy was riding the wave of a new technology and privy to much business correspondence passing through the office. He learned which businesses were buying, which were selling, which were growing and which were failing . . . all inside information that he eventually used to his benefit."

To keep the job, Carnegie had to learn his way around Pittsburgh.

"At night, instead of dreaming of the satanic boiler, he closed his eyes and worked on memorizing the various firms in the order they lined the streets and then he worked on knowing the businessmen and city leaders," Krass wrote.

To expand his opportunities, Carnegie taught himself Morse code and began filling in for the telegraph operators. He read voraciously. He soon got promoted from messenger to full-time telegraph operator.

Within two years he was filling in for the office manager and was promoted to full-time telegraph operator. He was given a raise to $16 a month — more than half of the $30 it cost to support his family.

What little money he had left over, he squirreled away. His plan, he told his younger brother, was for the two to found a company that "would be a be a great one and that father and mother should ride in their carriage."

Always on the lookout for new ways to make money, Carnegie used his resources wisely. As a telegraph operator, he launched a side business making copies of news that came across the telegraphs and selling it to local papers for $1 a week.

He would stick to that dedicated work ethic the rest of his life.

In 1853, he took a job as a secretary to Thomas Scott, superintendent of the western division of the Pennsylvania Railroad, for $35 a month. Again, Carnegie's diligence caught the eye of his boss and he soon saw his pay boosted to $50. He observed Scott closely as he wheeled and dealed.

"Under the tutelage of Tom Scott, a powerful man in a company that would soon be the largest in America, Andy learned the management skills, the financial dealings and the political maneuvers to build an empire," Krass wrote.

Building On Success

When the Civil War came, Carnegie succeeded Scott as head of the railroad's western division when Scott became the Union's assistant secretary of war in charge of transportation.

With each job, Carnegie stayed on the lookout for the next big opportunity. By 1870, he'd become one of the early investors in the Woodruff Sleeping Car Co. and owner of the original patent on the Pullman passenger railroad car. He also owned a successful petroleum company and had stakes in numerous Pittsburgh-area iron mills and factories.

But he wasn't content. Eager for new challenges, Carnegie left the railroad in 1865 to focus, he said, on becoming a capitalist.

He traveled to Europe, selling bonds issued by American railroads and bridge companies. He sought out experts such as Henry Bessemer, who'd invented the Bessemer process used to turn iron into steel.

Carnegie saw huge potential in the young steel industry. After thorough research, he decided in 1870 to focus on the industry; he set about acquiring a blast furnace to make pig iron.

When a depression gripped the American economy in 1874, Carnegie refused to abandon his steel operation. Instead, he slashed prices, drove out competitors and funneled his earnings back into his company.

He also focused on integrating his businesses vertically, buying them at every step of the steel-making process so he could streamline.

Within a decade he'd become the primary force in the steel industry. In 1901, he sold Carnegie Steel to J.P. Morgan for $480 million. Carnegie's share totaled $225 million, making him one of the world's richest men.

The money, however, wasn't enough; Carnegie wanted to use it for good. So he directed his energies to philanthropy, with the same zeal he brought to the business world.

By his death, he'd given roughly $350 million to establish public libraries, art and natural history museums, colleges and other philanthropic enterprises.
BY CHRISTINA WISE