The Bumpy Early Years of the U.S. Supreme Court: Growing Pains

After the end of the Revolutionary War, the United States existed under the principles set forth in the Articles of Confederation. When those principles were found wanting, delegates from every state gathered in 1787 to write a new document, the United States Constitution. The Constitution was ratified in 1788 and the new government began in 1789.

One part of that new government was the United States Supreme Court (USSC), which held its first meeting in 1790 and heard its first case in 1791.

The reader will be familiar with “checks and balances,” “the separation of powers,” and other foundational constitutional concepts.

In addition to its role in the system of checks and balances, the USSC serves as an agent protecting minority interests in the face of majority viewpoints. The framers of the Constitution correctly foresaw that there would be voices, like that of Senator Elizabeth Warren, demanding that the USSC issue its decisions in accord with “widely held public opinion.”

Were the USSC to operate according to Senator Warren’s stipulation, it would simply become the instrument of mob mentality.

It is the task therefore of the USSC to occasionally rule against “widely held public opinion,” when the principles of constitutional justice require it to do so. To stand against the social and political pressure of a mob majority, it must be in some way insulated, as Jonathan Turley writes:

A non-partisan, independent judiciary serves two essential purposes: it plays a vital role in preserving the separation of powers, which prevents all government power from being concentrated in one place, and it stands as a bulwark in defense of minority rights against a majority faction. To ensure its ability to perform these essential roles without being threatened by the political branches — the Congress and the executive branch — the Constitution gives federal jurists life tenure and salary protections.

Given the Supreme Court’s paradigmatic task, and given that all humans — even the nine justices who make up the USSC — are imperfect, it is no surprise that the early years of the Court saw it getting off to a rough start.

While the USSC functioned admirably, it had some individual poor performances, and some of the obstacles were the justices themselves. There were originally six justices on the Court, instead of the current nine. James Wilson was one of the original justices, serving for more than eight years on the USSC. as historian Mark Levin reports:

Wilson was appointed by George Washington in 1789. He had been one of the more influential delegates at the Constitutional Convention, but had serious financial troubles after he was appointed to the Court. He put his money into land speculation, fell into serious debt, and was put in debtor’s prison. He once had his son pay off a creditor, so that he — an associate justice of the Supreme Court — could be sprung from jail in Burlington County, New Jersey. Hounded by creditors, Wilson later left his native Pennsylvania and had to live a life on the run. After “holing up in a series of ‘dreary taverns,’” he died broke in North Carolina and was buried in an unmarked grave.

Another troubling personal situation surrounded John Rutledge, who was nominated to the Court upon the retirement of Chief Justice John Jay, as Mark Levin explains:

Rutledge, too, was appointed by Washington in 1795 — by recess appointment — and became the nation’s second chief justice. A United States senator from Rutledge’s native South Carolina wrote that “after the death of his wife, his mind was frequently so much deranged, as to be in a great measure deprived of his senses.” There was considerable opposition to Rutledge’s appointment, and he was voted down by the Senate. There had been rumors that his “mind was unsettled” and “he was becoming insane.” Rutledge’s depression was so serious that he made two failed suicide attempts, one shortly before and one soon after the Senate rejected his nomination.

While the biographies of James Wilson and John Rutledge are personal tragedies, both of them managed to serve reasonably well on the Court. More troubling were other instances, in which the personal lives of the justices were not problematic, but their rulings from the bench were disquieting.

Among that first slate of six justices were those who understood well the mechanisms of constitutional government, but did not embrace the essence of judicial impartiality, as Jonathan Turley notes:

Early in our nation’s history there were few professional standards governing the American court system. Courts were openly biased, with Federalist judges becoming virtual grand inquisitors of Jeffersonians under the infamous Alien and Sedition Acts passed during the presidency of John Adams. Judges and justices routinely ran for political office and openly engaged in political commentary from the bench. But this would change. The first university-based law school in the U.S. was founded in 1779 at The College of William & Mary in Williamsburg, Virginia, and America’s first independent law school was created in 1784 in Litchfield, Connecticut. Relatively quickly the partisanship that characterized the courts came to be tempered by professional standards that eschewed political associations and advocacy.

So it was that colleges and universities, and their law schools, played a salutary role in the formation of the USSC. Once the Supreme Court got past its bumpy start, it operated for over two centuries with a degree of professionalism and wisdom which was acknowledged even by those who disagreed with its rulings.

The occasional glaring mistakes — Dred Scott and Plessy — were not the fault of the constitutional structure, but rather of personal failings: whether of judgment or courage.

Even the harshest critics of the Court have identified the shortcomings of the USSC as either a lack of wisdom or a lack of character, and have not demanded significant changes to the framework of the judicial branch.

The Great Depression: First-Person Histories (Part 3)

When historians examine data about the Great Depression, some evidence is in the form of statistics about the economy; such evidence can shape hypotheses about the causes of the economic collapse. Other evidence is in the form of first-person narratives: writings from ordinary people who lived through the Great Depression and recorded their experiences. These first-person histories show on a micro level what statistics show on a macro level: how millions of small actions, independent individual initiatives, constituted a massive wave of assistance to the people who lost their jobs, properties, and incomes.

Chester Skow was a hobo in the 1930s, travelling by railroad from town to town, hoping to find a job and earn some money. When he did find a job, it was often short-term, and soon he’d be travelling again. As an example of the treatment he received, he tells about arriving in “a small Iowa town” and “knocking on back doors for handouts.”

Walking through a neighborhood, he writes, “I knocked on the door frame of a screened-in porch.” He continues:

A voice from behind the screen said, “Yes?” Looking back, I saw a matronly woman in an apron awaiting my answer.

Quickly, I explained that I was hungry and thirsty and that I would be happy to mow her lawn, wash her windows or do just about any task for a sandwich and a cool drink.

The woman told him that he could wash his face and hands while she prepared something. After washing,

The lady motioned me to sit down and then placed a heaping plate of food before me. On it were cottage-fried potatoes, eggs sunny-side up, toast and jam.

Across the United States, ordinary families gave away millions of meals during the 1930s. This was large-scale charity, implemented on a small scale many times over. It effectively helped many people to survive.

Mary Heinlein was a child during the Great Depression, living with her parents in Texas. The family owned and operated a small store. She writes that “when the Depression began, families” traveling from town to town “came to my dad for help.” She continues:

Some families were living in their cars and going without food.

One couple arrived at the store with their two little boys. They were tired, hungry, and discouraged. Dad couldn’t give them any money, since he had five children at home, but he gave them food and a place to sleep in exchange for work. The family moved on as soon as the father found a paying job.

The hardships of the Great Depression sparked creativity and inventiveness among the people as they brainstormed different ways to help. People of all ages were involved in charity. Sometimes they formed groups; sometimes they acted alone.

Toni Johnson and her young friends organized an impressive campaign, as she recalls:

When I was 12 years old, there were several needy families in our town of Leonardo, New Jersey. My friends and I wanted to do something to help. So seven of us started a club called “The Secret Helpers.”

The girls raised money. For reference, a loaf of bread in 1935 cost between seven and nine cents. A small amount of cash could feed several people. She continues:

We met once a week and paid 10¢ in dues to buy food for the six or seven families we decided to help on a regular basis.

They were able to purchase “soup from a local restaurant and bread from a bakery.” Delivering the food was tricky. A sense of pride and personal responsibility made it difficult for some people to accept help. The girls found a way:

When we had a box filled with food, we’d put it on the porch, ring the doorbell, and then dash out to the car so our identities would remain a secret.

Two of the families had five or more children, so we helped them the most. We heard one of the boys needed shoes, so we found out what size he wore and added those to the box.

Eventually, the secret group organized bakesales and fundraising shows at a school auditorium. The operation continued for several years.

The examples of Chester Skow, Toni Johnson, and Mary Heinlein are merely three out of millions. People made free personal choices to give some of their own time, money, and possessions to help others. That’s how the United States survived the Great Depression.

The Great Depression: First-Person Histories (Part 2)

The history of the Depression can quickly become a series of economic hypotheses and policy debates, but the events which make up the core narrative of the Great Depression are personal and concrete. Historians can ask whether tariffs and stock markets caused the Depression, but most of the evidence on hand doesn’t address such questions. The evidence centers more around some people who’d lost their possessions and their income, and other people who rendered tangible help.

Millions of unemployed adults, and their families, survived because of effective assistance from neighbors and strangers.

Evelyn Martin lived in Lowndes County, Alabama, during the 1930s. She was being raised by her grandparents. She called her grandfather “Granddaddy” and “Nannie” was her name for her grandmother. Her grandparents operated a store not far from the family home.

Working in the store, Nannie often saw wanderers: people with no work and no money. They wandered, hoping to find a job and earn a little money, but days and weeks could pass between the occasional short-term work. Evelyn writes:

Nannie had a warm, loving heart, and she couldn’t bear to see hardship; she had to do something to help. Whenever she spotted those wanderers, she’d send them to our house 2 blocks away for a hot meal.

Nannie “kept a big table set up in the backyard, and there was always a big pot of beans on the stove and hot corn bread in the oven.” The family had a large garden, and “much of that food was shared with others who were less fortunate.”

The families who helped were not naive. They fed the wanderers outdoors whenever possible. This avoided both improprieties and the appearance of improprieties. It also avoided making the hosts vulnerable to crime.

Pauline Clark lived near Helena, Montana. During the 1930s, hobos would walk through her neighborhood frequently. She gave them food. Some of them wanted to do some work to thank her. They cut wood for the stove.

She writes that she would make her “guest a big beef sandwich.” The men enjoyed conversation, too. She adds:

Sometimes I’d send the men off with an extra sandwich and cookies.

Pauline had a sense of responsibility, because she had more than the unemployed men who were constantly looking for work. She reports:

I had no money, as those were hard times even with my husband working, but I could share what food we had.

Although unemployment was high, and wages were low, the majority of the workforce in the United States had employment. This enabled them to have something to share with those who had nothing.

Jean L. Jones was a child in Carterville, Illinois, during the 1930s. She recalls the pattern which repeated itself often: a wanderer “knocked on our door late one morning and asked if we could share some food with him, perhaps a sandwich.”

Like many homemakers of the Depression Era, Jean’s mother had a habit of providing something:

Mother had not yet fixed lunch and had no meat ready, but said she could give him a bread-and-butter sandwich if that would help. He accepted it gratefully.

The written first-person accounts of Evelyn Martin, Pauline Clark, and Jean Jones provide the insight that it was independent individual initiative which helped millions of people survive the Great Depression. Many small personal actions added up to gigantic effort. Personal responsibility and an ethic of charity yielded concrete specific actions which were extremely effective in addressing the needs of the era.

The Great Depression: First-Person Histories (Part 1)

It is difficult to give a precise date for the start of the Great Depression and for the end of it. It’s difficult to identify the economic causes and mechanisms which initiated it and which terminated it. It’s difficult to explain the relationship between the Great Depression and the stock market crash of October 1929 — cause or effect?

Although some of these technical and conceptual aspects are ambiguous, the Great Depression was quite real, and concrete evidence of specific details is plentiful. Among these are the words of the women and men who lived through it.

First-person accounts are an important part of historiography. Although few people are now living who were old enough to have accurate insightful memories of the Great Depression, there are many of their writings which are preserved.

In California, near the city of Redding, Singer Lane was a child on a family-owned farm. She recalls that her parents lost all their money when the local bank collapsed, and when only a day later, the family’s house was completely destroyed in a fire.

They had nothing but the bare ground of the farmland. She writes:

The family moved in with relatives temporarily. One day Dad and Mother looked up and saw a caravan of cars coming, led by a car with a mattress tied on top.

Their friends and neighbors were bringing whatever items they could spare from their own households to help them set up housekeeping again.

Not long after that, Mother received word that her mother wanted her to come for a visit. When she arrived, she found a quilting party in progress in her honor. The ladies spent the day making quilts to replace those that Mother had lost.

The helping hands that assisted my parents encouraged them to keep farming, and they stayed at it for many more years.

Families, friends, and neighbors were the main source — and perhaps the only source — of support. Unemployment peaked at around 25% in the United States, and while that is a catastrophic level, it also implies that around 75% of the workforce was employed.

There were enough people who had an income that personal generosity and voluntary contributions to local charitable organizations were able to provide support for those who’d lost income, lost property, or lost both.

In Kansas, near the town of De Soto, Cecile Kulp’s father owned and operated a general store. Unemployed men, moving from town to town by railroad, sought work. She writes:

Many of these men came into the store to ask for food. My father always fed them.

Also in the town, there were charities and “missions” operating:

Soon there were bread lines — hungry people standing in lines a block long just to get a bite of food. Some of the missions offered one free meal a day.

Many small acts of goodwill, multiplied by the millions across the United States, sustained individuals and families who had been financially devastated.

In Texas, in the town of Falfurrias, Roberta Ferguson and her family were able to keep their house; her husband was able to keep his job. Having these resources, they were able to help:

During the winters of 1931 and ‘32, hardly a day passed that I didn’t have one or more hobos at my door, asking for a cup of coffee and a bite to eat or a small job they could perform for a quarter or 50¢. If my husband was home, we often invited the man in to eat at our table and visit a bit. If he wasn’t home, I didn’t invite the men in, but I always had something to give them.

Like many young men in the early 1930s, Raphael Magelky was travelling by railroad from town to town, looking for work. Such men depended entirely on the kindness of strangers for weeks on end, between the occasional weeks when they were able to find some employment. He writes:

I remember one very generous lady who had just served a meal but hadn’t cleared the table yet. She asked me to come in and wash up, and then served me chicken, potatoes, and homemade gravy. It reminded me of the days when I was living at home and my own mother cooked food like that.

Due to the writings of people like Singer Lane, Cecile Kulp, Roberta Ferguson, and Raphael Magelky, there is concrete evidence, both of the conditions of the time, and of the ways in which people helped each other to survive.

Mechanical Inventiveness Improves the Covered Wagon — The German Settlers in the Conestoga Valley

When twenty-first century readers come across the phrase, “German Engineering,” they often think of Porsche, Mercedes, Audi, or BMW. But more than a century before the automobile was invented, Germans were already known for precision craftsmanship and inventive designs.

Even those who gather their impressions of American History only from Hollywood films will have some mental image of a “covered wagon” or “Conestoga wagon” — often associated with the westward migration of the 1800s.

The Conestoga was not the first covered wagon design, nor was it the last. The term ‘Conestoga wagon’ is used too loosely in narratives about those early crossings of the Great Plains. A more specific, yet not absolutely precise, understanding of what constitutes a true Conestoga can be attempted.

A “covered wagon” in the simple sense of some type of horse-drawn wheeled vehicle with an overhead cloth had been around for centuries in various global cultures by the time Germans settled in the Conestoga Valley, an area in Pennsylvania approximately fifty miles west of Philadelphia. In the late 1600s and early 1700s they were using the then-current version of a covered wagon: a rectangular body with four wheels, some kind of cloth cover on vertical sticks to keep out at least some of the sun and rain, and drawn by horses.

The Germans in Conestoga Valley differed from other immigrant groups in that they were not all farmers. In the late 1600s and early 1700s, the vast majority of people, in all societies around the globe, were farmers. The same was true of the Germans in central Europe. But among the Germans who immigrated to North America, there was a disproportionate number of tradesmen and skilled craftsmen. This overrepresentation was driven by the economics of immigration. Few farmers in central Europe could contemplate emigrating: it was expensive.

The carpenters and blacksmiths among the German settlers were inventive. There were no colleges or universities granting “engineering” degrees in those days, but these craftsmen had worked out for themselves systems of geometry and physics, as historian Thomas Sowell writes:

About half of all the Germans in colonial America lived in Pennsylvania. Not all of these were farmers. Skilled workers were almost as numerous as farmers. They not only performed a variety of tasks; they developed new products as well.

Looking with a technical eye at the basic covered wagon, the Germans decided to design an upgraded model. The wheels would have a larger diameter to overcome the roughness of the roads; the wheels would be wider for the same reason; the entire structure would be made of thicker boards, to withstand the weight of the cargo as well as the jostling and rattling; The iron band which formed a sort of tire where the wheel contacted the road would also be thicker; the body of the wagon itself would be curved: the bottom curved downward, so that cargo settled near the center of gravity, and the sides were likewise curved; the covering was supported by a series of curved wood hoops. The new design for the covering allowed for a higher covering, one which was more effective at excluding rain, sun, and snow — and was less likely to be blown away in a strong wind.

All in all, it was a massive upgrade in wagon design, and it is to this model that the name ‘Conestoga’ is most accurately applied. It was rugged and durable, and able to haul up to 7.3 tons (14,600 pounds). The initial demand for this redesign arose from the need to bring farm produce to Lancaster and Philadelphia.

It was impressive in size, as historian Thomas Sowell explains:

Germans in the Pennsylvania Dutch country near Conestoga Creek produced a wagon for hauling farm produce, a wagon that was destined to play a major role in the later settlement of the western United States. The Conestoga wagon was a large and rugged vehicle, covered by canvas draped over high, arching hoops. It was eleven feet high, twenty-six feet long (counting the wagon tongue), weighed about 3,000 pounds, and required six strong horses to pull it.

Back in central Europe, the Germans had a reputation as expert wagon-makers, whether building refined luxury vehicles for Sunday afternoon drives, or building heavy-duty hauling vehicles for construction and agriculture. Beyond wagon-building, they were generally adroit in various manners of engineering, with iron, wood, stone, and brick. The Germans were the technicians of the era. The settlers brought this skilled expertise with them to Pennsylvania.

The new wagon design was built over the decades by the thousands. Although it was somewhat of a standardized design, there were many small differences among the many individual examples constructed.

Their application spread beyond farming, as Thomas Sowell reports:

In the eighteenth century there were “great files of these enormous wagons lumbering into Philadelphia along the Lancaster Road, sometimes as many as a hundred or more a day.” Although originally designed by German farmers to carry their produce to market, the covered wagons proved useful for many other purposes. In 1755, they were used by the British to carry military supplies during the French and Indian War. Later, the American army used the covered wagons during the Revolutionary War. The most famous role of the covered wagons came still later — transporting American pioneers across the great plains of the West toward the Pacific Ocean. These were the wagon trains that braved the elements, forded the rivers, and pulled into circles to fight off Indians.

By the time of the westward expansion, although the name ‘Conestoga’ was still used, some of the vehicles in the wagon trains were no longer true Conestogas. As construction of the vehicles spread beyond Pennsylvania, local builders took liberties with the design. Sometimes the sides and bottom were flat and straight instead of curved. Sometimes thinner wood was used. This made the vehicles less expensive, and made them lighter so that they could be drawn by fewer horses. But they were also less rugged and reliable. They were more prone to breakdown.

The true Conestogas were more likely to endure the long westward journey, and so the name has been preserved in History.

Immigrant Groups Bring Their Characteristic Skills to the Frontier: The Germans and the Scotch-Irish

Starting with the Spanish presence in Florida (1513) and the English settlement at Jamestown (1607), the cultures of the various waves of immigrants have shaped the societies in the areas that would become the United States. Each ethnicity brought with it talents and abilities, techniques refined in the previous centuries in its home territory, as well as new applications of those old artisan trades in a new land.

Each culture was, or became, inventive in its own way. Life on the frontier demanded creativity. Settlements which lacked resourcefulness often disappeared.

Some of these groups were quite different from one another, which led at times to frictions, and at other times to a fruitful complementarity. The groups cooperated and collaborated when necessary, but often ridiculed each other when times were easier. Many of the stereotypes and cliches which still circulate in American society about these ethnicities come from this era — from the mid-1600s onward.

The Germans and the Scotch-Irish were two contrasting groups who moved into the frontier regions, as historian Thomas Sowell writes:

As the German farming communities spread down through the Appalachian valley near the frontier, they found themselves often near the Scotch-Irish, who were frontiersmen par excellence. The Scotch-Irish often led the way into the untamed wilderness, hunting, fishing, clearing land, and fighting Indians, with the Germans and others following after the area became more settled.

The Scotch-Irish were rugged people who cared little for form and propriety. They were “pioneers” in the etymological sense: they were foot soldiers, if not literally, then at least in their attitudes.

The Germans were methodical, precise, and process-oriented. German families operated on mottos like “a place for everything, and everything in its place.” The value they placed on organization meant that not only were there correct things to do, but correct ways to do them. Thomas Sowell contrasts the two:

The Germans and the Scotch-Irish were very different in temperament and behavior and generally kept quite separate from each other, even in adjacent settlements. The Germans were noted for their order, quietness, friendliness, steady work, frugality, and their ability to get along with the Indians. The Scotch-Irish were just the opposite — quick-tempered, hard drinking, working intermittently, saving little, washing little, and constantly involved in feuds among themselves or with the Indians.

As recently as the first decade of the twentieth century, small German villages in Missouri retained the language, customs, and social patterns of Germany. They preserved the Germany they’d left in the early 1800s. To walk into the village of Frohna, Missouri in 1914 was like walking into a German village of a century earlier. The residents spoke German, and the children were exposed to the English language only when they were old enough to go to school. They brewed their own beer, and made their own wine, in accord with the methods which had been used in Germany for centuries. Once every few weeks, a family might venture to a neighboring village to “trade with the English” — meaning to buy from the marchants in the English-speaking villages.

The Scotch-Irish, meanwhile, made their own whiskey, were crude and vulgar by the standards of any of America’s ethnic immigrant groups, and fiercely independent. It is no coincidence that the most radical of the leaders in the American Revolution were not Germans. The Germans contributed more to the moderate aspects of the Revolution, like sorting out the details of representative government and refining the manufacture of weapons.

Religion, too, was a metric by which the differences between these groups could be measured, as Thomas Sowell reports:

Religious differences also divided them. The early German settlers were usually pious Lutherans, Calvinists, and other strict Protestant sects that avoided strong language or strong drink, while the Scotch-Irish were Presbyterians and were given to hard liquor and language that pious people considered blasphemous. After a century of sharing hundreds of miles of the great valleys of the Appalachian range, there was still little racial intermixture between the Germans and the Scotch-Irish.

Examples of the Scotch-Irish social patterns include the McCoy-Hatfield feud, which included both violence and whiskey (1863 - 1891); and the Whiskey Rebellion (1791 - 1794). Both these examples are predominately, but not purely, Scotch-Irish. Individuals of English ancestry were also involved.

Examples of the German influence include Concordia Publishing House, whose roots and antecedents reach back to 1844, making it one of the earliest publishers, if not the earliest publisher, in the state of Missouri and on the western frontier in general. The Germans also led the way in founding commercial beer breweries, e.g., Pabst (in the 1840s) and Yuengling (in the 1820s). Yuengling was originally spelled Jüngling. Germans planted vineyards and made wine on a commercial scale throughout the United States, especially in Ohio, Missouri, and Illinois. Apart from large-scale operations, individual German farmers around America routinely made their own wine and brewed their own beer.

The cultural contrasts between the two groups are clear. Yet in the course of the American Revolution, and in the process of creating an American civilization and an American society, they both contributed, without surrendering their cultures and ethnicities.

Generosity on an Industrial Scale: Andrew Carnegie’s Charitable Giving

Long before Bill Gates and Elon Musk, there was a Scotsman, born in the county of Fife in 1835. His parents were poor and they emigrated to the United States in 1848, bringing him along and looking for economic opportunities and upward social mobility. His name was Andrew Carnegie.

He started working in the telegraph business, then for railroad companies, and finally in the steel industry. From bitter poverty, he worked with focus and developed his mind, and eventually became one of the wealthiest men on earth. How much money did he have? The answer is not entirely clear. Naturally, his exact net worth varied over the years. Any dollar amount given would have to be adjusted for more than a century’s worth of inflation. Any figure ventured would be preceded by the word ‘approximately’ and qualified with the phrase ‘at least’ because such reckonings cannot be precise.

At various points, his net worth was at least approximately $500 million, and it could have easily been double that. Adjusted to dollar amounts in the year 2026, that would be roughly $20 billion.

These numbers are minimums. Depending on which assets are counted, and how they are counted, even tripling those figures might be possible.

Was Carnegie the “richest” man in the world? Again, it is difficult to give a precise answer. At the time, there were empires, and the dynasties who ruled them counted vast amounts of land and palaces as personal property. There might have been emperors — in Russia, China, Germany, Austria, or Britain — who were worth more on paper. Carnegie was probably the richest businessman in the world.

The newspapers of the first two decades of the twentieth century sometimes referred to Carnegie as “the world’s richest man.” Yet when he died in 1919, he made sure that he was no longer qualified for this title. “Carnegie, who acquired” the reputation of being the world’s richest man “in 1901, when he sold his Pennsylvania steel empire to rival J.P. Morgan for the then-unimaginable sum of $480 million, had spent many of the intervening years giving away his fortune,” writes historian Les Standiford.

Andrew Carnegie gave away hundreds of millions of dollars.

The amount of money he had at one point in time was amazing. Equally amazing was the amount he gave away, so that by the time he died, his net worth was not even a tenth of what it had been.

In addition to the funding of some 2,800 public libraries across the United States and as far away as Fiji and New Zealand, he had endowed the Carnegie Institute of Technology in his adopted hometown of Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, the Carnegie Research Institution in Washington, D.C., and the Carnegie Educational Foundation in New York City, as well as the Endowment for International Peace. This last endowment was, in the final decade of his life, the cornerstone of his attempts to sway the nations of the world from their fixation upon war as a solution to political problems.

Carnegie’s efforts to secure world peace would cost nearly $25 million ($5.5 billion today), but that was a pittance compared to all his giving.

Les Standiford wrote the paragraph above in 2005. By 2026, the number would be even greater.

Carnegie was personally involved in his institutional donations. He did not delegate these decisions. The cities of Braddock and Homestead in Pennsylvania, separated only by a river, were of special interest to him.

“At the 1889 dedication of the beautifully designed Braddock Public Library — a sprawling sandstone structure more aptly described as a community center, complete with auditorium, swimming pool, and spacious reading rooms — Andrew Carnegie had capped the ceremonies” by giving a brief speech by referring to himself as one “of those who labor and perform a use in the community.” He saw himself as serving society.

Directly across the Monongahela River from the city of Braddock was the city of Homestead. Carnegie owned production facilities in both towns. His relationship to the large workforces in those two towns had not always been the friendliest, yet he chose to give to these communities, as Les Standiford reports:

Carnegie finally built a library for the workers of Homestead in 1898, an even grander sandstone monument than its counterpart across the river in Braddock. The building, complete with pool, auditorium, and lofty reading rooms, still stands.

He also made gifts to towns in which he had no direct business interests. He gave to towns around the world. He was looking for opportunities to make a difference.

One of Carnegie’s libraries went up in the blue-collar hill town of Cambridge, Ohio, shortly after the turn of the century. It wasn’t on the scale of those virtual palaces in Braddock and Homestead; the library grants were tied to the size of the population, and Cambridge was an unprepossessing town of a few thousand souls.

The building seemed extravagant in such a town, and became a point of local pride.

The building seemed grand. The staircases were broad and made of marble, the ceilings were high, the walls paneled in wood.

Prior to his retirement from the business world in 1901, Carnegie had engaged in generous charitable giving. After retirement, his efforts in this direction increased significantly, and he spent a great deal of time funding projects to help society.

By all appearances, the principal occupation of “the richest man in the world” from the moment of his retirement was giving all his money away.

While he had long been building libraries around the nation and the world, and had, as early as 1892, provided $2 million to build Carnegie Hall (originally named the New York City Music Hall), the “wee Andra” now threw himself into philanthropic activity with a zeal.

In the Scottish speech of Carnegie’s childhood, “wee Andra” would be equivalent to “little Andy” in American English. His $2,000,000 donation in 1892 would be approximately $71,820,879 in 2026 dollars. One of his more famous comments was: “The man who dies rich, dies disgraced.”

Although entire volumes have been written on Carnegie’s philanthropy and on individual Carnegie foundations, a thumbnail overview might convey just how much $327 million can accomplish:

The endowment of nearly three thousand public library buildings around the world accounted for some $60 million of his total giving.

The reader will notice that the math of trying to express the size of Carnegie’s various projects in 2026 dollars is not entirely consistent in the examples here given. This is because various historians and economists reckon differently. These numbers are best understood as impressions.

It’s worth noting that some of the public buildings that Carnegie funded took on his name only after his death. While he was alive, he gave many of these institutions names which did not include any reference to him. Many of these buildings never took on his name, and so he remains effectively an anonymous donor to this day, e.g., in the case of local libraries.

Few acts of philanthropy have enjoyed such universal, enduring recognition; nearly a thousand of the buildings are still in use as libraries to this day, more than thirty in the boroughs of New York City alone.

Likewise, houses of worship contain valuable musical instruments with no obvious reference to the Carnegie name. While Carnegie was religious and spiritual, he was not exceptionally enthusiastic about organized religion. For most of his life, he was a member of the Presbyterian church, but was not much involved beyond sporadic Sunday morning attendance. He was personally friends with several of the church’s pastors, and donated generously to the church.

Despite his complicated relationship with organized religion, he funded the construction and installation of approximately 7,000 pipe organs in various churches, as Les Standiford writes:

Even more ubiquitous than his libraries were the organs he had given to churches. This was a program that had begun almost by accident, after Carnegie gave an organ to a church in Allegheny City, his first American home. Before it was over, Carnegie, an agnostic who said he continued the practice because it “lessened the pain of the sermons,” had given away nearly eight thousand organs, at a cost of over $6 million.

Keeping his eyes open for projects, he encountered many of them serendipitously. This accounts for the broad range of interest areas: from libraries to churches to education.

“In 1902, he” donated “$32 million to endow the Carnegie Institution of Washington, a still-extant think tank for advanced research in the sciences,” writes Les Standiford.

Carnegie had a deep attachment to the United States, but also to the country of his birth, and was happy to fund projects in both places.

At about the same time, he established the Carnegie Trust for the Universities of Scotland with a gift of $10 million.

One library in particular became the seed for a much larger project:

In 1895, Carnegie dedicated the Carnegie Library of Pittsburgh, an imposing, 300-foot-long structure made possible by a grant of $1 million. By the turn of the twentieth century, the library had become the centerpiece of the still-standing Carnegie Institute, a monument to culture that included art and science museums and a concert hall. Ultimately, Carnegie’s original $1 million investment would grow to more than $25 million.

At a Pittsburgh dinner in late 1900, Carnegie announced that he was offering the city a $1 million endowment to build a technical school as an adjunct to the Institute. He would later add another $6.5 million. First called the Carnegie Technical Schools, then the Carnegie Institute of Technology, it was merged in 1967 with the Mellon Institute of Industrial Research (founded by Andrew Mellon in 1913) and is known today as Carnegie Mellon University.

Constantly making connections to various non-profit schemes, he seems to have worked as hard in giving away his money as he did in earning it in the first place.

Another major gift to education came in 1905, when Carnegie, prompted by a visit to Skibo from Henry Pritchett, the president of MIT, gave $15 million to create the Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching. The foundation went on to found such programs as the Teachers Insurance and Annuity Association and the Educational Testing Service. It still operates worldwide.

In 1911, somewhat overwhelmed by the task of giving away money, he made his single greatest gift, endowing the Carnegie Corporation of New York, formed for “the advancement and diffusion of knowledge,” with $125 million. The corporation was to oversee many of the projects already undertaken, as well as to create a board of trustees that would assume the burden of determining worthy recipients for the remainder of Carnegie’s fortune, which totaled about $180 million. Today the Carnegie Corporation’s endowment is valued at about $1.8 billion and continues its work in teacher education, and increased participation of the citizenry in the political process.

Carnegie’s gifts supported a wide range of projects, many still in operation, including the Carnegie Hero Fund ($5 million), designed in 1904 to recognize extraordinary acts of peacetime bravery and compensate those injured while performing those acts of heroism.

Over a century later, Carnegie’s cash is still at work. The libraries are still operating in towns around America and in towns around the world; the organs still playing hymns on Sunday mornings; the university buildings still standing and the university endowments still funding educations; the peace institutes still orchestrating diplomatic meetings.

Such creations as the Hero Fund continue to affect the lives of citizens worldwide (the fund made a significant number of awards in the wake of the September 11 tragedy).

Like many people of his time, Andrew Carnegie saw WW1 approaching. The competitions and tensions between the European powers clearly were nudging that continent toward war.

He hoped to fund diplomatic efforts to diffuse tensions and avoid wars.

In all his record of giving, however, nothing came to engage Carnegie more deeply than his quest to put an end to war between nations. Though it may be commonplace today for a schoolchild to begin an essay with a heartfelt desire “to achieve world peace,” for Carnegie, it was no mere wish upon a star.

Carnegie’s efforts to find diplomatic solutions to international conflicts lifted The Hague from being a national capital to a global ambassadorial meeting place and the seat of international justice. Les Standiford explains:

Carnegie delivered a blistering speech early in the century at New York’s Metropolitan Club, where he denounced war as the “foulest blot upon humanity today.” He questioned just how far civilization could be said to have progressed, “as long as we can find no better substitute for the settling of international disputes than the brutal murder of one another.

One of the immediate results was the endowment of an international law library and center for the arbitration of disputes between nations at The Hague, site of an 1899 conference on world peace. Though he was at first hesitant about usurping the business of nations, Carnegie ultimately gave $1.5 million for the construction of the International Peace Palace and the establishment of the Permanent Court of Arbitration.

In 1910, heartened by President Taft’s resolve to ensure his own legacy as a peacemaker among nations, and disturbed by growing tensions in Europe, Carnegie approached Taft with the idea of endowing a private organization to support the president’s agenda. After consulting with Taft and his secretary of state (and former Carnegie Company attorney), Philander C. Knox, Carnegie made his proposal. In return for Taft’s efforts to secure a network of peace treaties between the United States and other major powers Carnegie would contribute $10 million to endow the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, “to a thorough and scientific investigation and study of the causes of war and of practice methods to prevent and avoid it.”

Andrew Carnegie decisively shaped many features of our world today, and he did so not seeking power, fame, money, or self-aggrandizement, but seeking rather to rid himself of his huge fortune and make the world a better place.