Andrew Carnegie

The son of a Scottish weaver, Carnegie arrived in Pennsylvania at thirteen and worked in a cotton mill for a dollar twenty a week. He built the largest steel company in the world and sold it in 1901 for what was then the biggest private transaction in history.

He then spent the rest of his life giving the money away, funding 2,509 public libraries. His own steelworks had broken the Homestead strike in 1892 with guns and dead men; he was abroad at the time and never escaped the reproach.