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InvestigationPhilanthropy, an American history (2/5). The story of the descendants of these 19th century industrial giants illustrates how American billionaires have long contributed, generously or by calculation, to the development of powerful foundations.
We hear the ringing of the clock and the song of the canary. In her lost Colorado home, 72-year-old Linda Thorell Hills lives bourgeois, but not ostentatious, with an aged car. She introduces herself : "I am a mother who raised her three children and I garden", and then she lets go, after a few minutes of webcam chat: "There is a little joke going around between us. We think he could have left a little more money for his family. " " He ", it is the great-grandfather, Andrew Carnegie (1835-1919), king of the steel, nicknamed "the richest Man of the world" after he sold, in 1901, his steel empire for $ 480 million at the time.
The richest man in the world did not remain the same, he who posed, in 1889, in his essay Gospel of wealth, the foundations of American philanthropy: "The rich dying man dies dishonored. " Andrew Carnegie therefore left some 2,500 public libraries, a famous concert hall in New York, a university and a museum in Pittsburgh (Pennsylvania) to the country. But to his family, nothing or so little. Not even his name: the industrialist born in Scotland and emigrated to Pennsylvania in 1848 had only one daughter, who inherited a pretty sum, a residence in New York and a castle in Scotland, but nothing extravagant. "I will rather leave my son my curse than the mighty dollar", had warned Carnegie.
His descendants followed his instructions. "We were practically not allowed to mention his name, continues Linda Thorell Hills. My mom thought it was boastful to do it. " Thus did she know the journey of "normal" American children of the second half of the XXe century: young married parents, divorced, remarried mother, moving from the East Coast to Colorado.
Young Linda received for her 21 years in 1968 some $ 60,000, which flourished but not enough to make her very wealthy. Later, family history caught up with her: in 2007, she was appointed member of the Carnegie Civil Hero Prize commission, awarded after a mining disaster in 1904. "Having someone in the family gave them energy", she rejoices, happy to reconnect with the glorious ancestor. The principles are preserved: 22 of the 24 Carnegie foundations prosper, freed from all ties with the family, forced to resell, in the early 1980s, the castle in Scotland.
