Scope and Content Note
The papers of Andrew Carnegie (1835-1919) include family records, correspondence, letterbooks, reports, memoranda, financial records, scrapbooks, speeches, articles, and books, and printed matter and related material. The papers span the years 1803-1935, with the bulk of the material from 1890 to 1919. The collection is organized in six series: General Correspondence, Speeches and Writings File, Miscellany , Scrapbooks, Carnegie Corporation and Related papers, and Addition.
The collection relates to all aspects of Carnegie's life, but the emphasis is on business and charitable activities. The principal series, General Correspondence, consists of letters to and from Carnegie with attached and related papers. Although the main focus is on steel manufacturing, a considerable portion of the correspondence concerns corporations, investments, and labor issues. Peace, arbitration, anti-imperialism, the Isthmian Canal, education, African Americans, and Scottish-American matters are other subjects prominently represented, and there are numerous files on the Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching, Carnegie Institute of Pittsburgh, Carnegie Institute of Washington, and the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace.
An extensive Carnegie Corporation file contains correspondence, letterbooks, financial papers, and reports and memoranda concerning the philanthropic activities of the corporation. Letterbooks relating to philanthropies prior to the establishment of the corporation are included in this file.
Drafts and printed copies of Carnegie's writings and addresses are contained in a Speeches and Writings File.
Carnegie corresponded with a great many of the leading figures of his time, both in this country and abroad. They include John Emerich Edward Dalberg Acton, Baron Acton; Arthur James Balfour, Earl of Balfour; John Barrett; James P. Bertram; William Jennings Bryan; James Bryce, Viscount Bryce; Nicholas Murray Butler; Joseph Hodges Choate; Samuel Harden Church; Samuel Langhorne Clemens; Grover Cleveland; W. Evans Darby; Frank Nelson Doubleday; Theodore W. Dwight; Charles William Eliot; Robert Erskine Ely; Paul-Henri-Benjamin Balluet, baron d'Estournelle de Constant; Robert A. Franks; Henry Clay Frick; Richard Watson Gilder; Daniel Coit Gilman; W. E. Gladstone; Edward Grey, Viscount Grey of Fallodon; Edward Everett Hale; William Vernon Harcourt; John Hay; Abram S. Hewitt; Francis Mairs Huntington-Wilson; Robert Green Ingersoll; Robert Underwood Johnson; Philander C. Knox; George Lauder, Sr.; George Lauder, Jr.; David Lloyd George; Henry Cabot Lodge; Francis T. F. Lovejoy; Seth Low; and Frederick H. Lynch.
Still other correspondents are Theodore Marburg; S. S. McClure; Nelson Appleton Miles; Thomas N. Miller; J. Pierpont Morgan; John Morley; Simon Newcomb; Walter Hines Page; Alton Brooks Parker; George Foster Peabody; Henry Phipps; Henry S. Pritchett; Whitelaw Reid; John D. Rockefeller; Theodore Roosevelt; Elihu Root; John Ross; Carl Schurz; Charles M. Schwab; James Brown Scott; William H. Short; Goldwin Smith; James Carnegie, Earl of Southesk; Herbert Spencer; Hermann Speck von Sternberg; Oscar S. Straus; James Moore Swank; William H. Taft; Charles L. Taylor; J. Edgar Thomson; Charlemagne Tower; Joseph P. Tumulty; Booker T. Washington; Andrew Dickson White; Henry White; Horace White; Woodrow Wilson; and Robert Simpson Woodward.