CARNEGIE AND HIS MOTHER

Pukekohe & Waiuku Times, Volume 5, Issue 211, 22 September 1916, Page 4 (Supplement)

CARNEGIE AND HIS MOTHER

HIS FIRST INVESTMENT. The famous milliona_re has always been proud of the fact that the home in which he was born in Dumfermlin*, Fif.esh.ire, Scotland, was a modest one, and he has told how his mother was companion, nurse, seamstress, cook, and washerwoman, and never i ntil late in life had a servant in the housi?. " Yet she was a cultivated lady," say* Mr. Carnegie, "and taught me most of what I know. I owe a great deal to my mother."

At ,a very earl/ age Mr. Carnegie started work as a bobbin boy :n a lineti factory in America, whence his father had emigrated. His next job was thnt of a messenger boy with the Ohio Tel»v. graph Company, and he passed through the stages of telegraph opentor till he reached the position of division superintendent on the Pennsylvania Railroad Company. During the Amar.ean Civil War Mr. Carnegie was in charge of the Government telegraph. service.

.Mr. Carnegie's first successful invest. ment was the introduction of sleepingcars, and on this venture lie made n profit of over £IO,OOO, realised practically without capital. Of this money he invested about £B,OOO in oil-wells and obtained a return of more than a quarter of a million. And that first investment in sleeping-c-ars and oilwells was the foundation of the millions which Carnegie says he wish-is to dispose of before he dies.