Andrew Carnegie was born into a poor family of weavers in a small town in Scotland, in 1835.. After emigrating with his family to America in 1848,, he started his first job at the age of only thirteen, working in a cotton mill as a 'bobbin boy', his task being to change the spools of thread on the machines. For this, he earned one dollar twenty a week. Despite his poor beginnings, a little over fifty years later, Carnegie would retire from business as the second richest man in the world, and spend the rest of his life as a philanthropist, helping those less fortunate than himself. By the time of the American Civil War in 1861,, Carnegie had been a telegraph operator and a railroad worker.
尽管早年贫寒，卡内基在50多年后退休的时候已经成为世界上第二富有的人，他始终投身慈善事业，帮助那些不如自己幸运的人。