AND HIS LIBRARIES.
"This, then, is held to be the duty of the man of wealth: First, to set
an example of modest, unostentatious living, shunning display or
extravagance; to provide moderately for the legitimate wants of those
dependent upon him; and after doing so, to consider all surplus revenues
which come to him simply as trust funds, which he is called upon to
administer, and strictly bound as a matter of duty to administer in the
manner which, in his judgment, is best calculated to produce the most
beneficial results for the community,--the man of wealth thus becoming
the mere trustee and agent for his poorer brethren."
Thus wrote Andrew Carnegie in his "Gospel of Wealth," published in the
_North American Review_ for June, 1889. This article so interested Mr.
Gladstone that he asked the editor of the _Review_ to permit its
republication in England, which was done. When the world follows this
"Gospel," and those who have means consider themselves "trustees for
their poorer brethren," and their money as "trust funds," we shall see
little of the heartbreak and the poverty of the present age.
[Illustration: Always your friend, Andrew Carnegie]
"Ring in the valiant man and free,
The larger heart, the kindlier hand;
Ring out the darkness of the land,
Ring in the Christ that is to be."
Andrew Carnegie was born at Dunfermline, Scotland, Nov. 25, 1835, into a
poor but honest home. His father, William Carnegie, was a weaver, a man
of good sense, strongly republican, though living under a monarchy, and
well-read upon the questions of the day. The mother was a woman of
superior mind and character, to whom Andrew was unusually devoted, till
her death in 1886, when he had reached middle life.
When Andrew was twelve years of age and his brother Thomas five, the
parents decided to make their home in the New World, coming to New York
in a sailing-vessel in 1847. They travelled to Pittsburg, Penn., and
lived for some time in Allegheny City.
Andrew had been sent to school in Dunfermline, and, having a fondness
for books, was a bright, ambitious boy at twelve, ready to begin the
struggle for a living so as to make the family burdens lighter. Work was
not easily found; but finally he obtained employment as a bobbin-boy in
a cotton factory, at $1.20 a week.
Mr. Carnegie, when grown to manhood, wrote in the _Youth's Companion_,
April 23, 1896:--
"I cannot tell you how proud I was when I received my first week's own
earnings. One dollar and twenty cents made by myself, and given to me
because I had been of some use in the world! No longer entirely
dependent upon my parents, but at last admitted to the family
partnership as a contributing member, and able to help them! I think
this makes a man out of a boy sooner than almost anything else, and a
real man too, if there be any germ of true manhood in him. It is
everything to feel that you are useful.
"I have had to deal with great sums. Many millions of dollars have since
passed through my hands. But the genuine satisfaction I had from that
one dollar and twenty cents outweighs any subsequent pleasure in
money-getting. It was the direct reward of honest manual labor; it
represented a week of very hard work, so hard that but for the aim and
end which sanctified it, slavery might not be much too strong a term to
describe it.
"For a lad of twelve to rise and breakfast every morning, except the
blessed Sunday morning, and go into the streets and find his way to the
factory, and begin work while it was still dark outside, and not be
released until after darkness came again in the evening, forty minutes'
interval only being allowed at noon, was a terrible task.
"But I was young, and had my dreams; and something within always told me
that this would not, could not, should not last--I should some day get
into a better position. Besides this, I felt myself no longer a mere
boy, but quite 'a little man;' and this made me happy."
Another place soon opened for the lad, where he was set to fire a boiler
in a cellar, and to manage the small steam-engine which drove the
machinery in a bobbin factory. "The firing of this boiler was all
right," says Mr. Carnegie; "for fortunately we did not use coal, but the
refuse wooden chips, and I always liked to work in wood. But the
responsibility of keeping the water right and of running the engine,
and the danger of my making a mistake and blowing the whole factory to
pieces, caused too great a strain, and I often awoke and found myself
sitting up in bed through the night trying the steam-gauges. But I never
told them at home that I was having a 'hard tussle.' No! no! everything
must be bright to them.
"This was a point of honor; for every member of the family was working
hard except, of course, my little brother, who was then a child, and we
were telling each other only all the bright things. Besides this, no man
would whine and give up--he would die first.
"There was no servant in our family, and several dollars per week were
earned by 'the mother' by binding shoes after her daily work was done!
Father was also hard at work in the factory. And could I complain?"
Wages were small, and in every leisure moment Andrew looked for
something better to do. He went one day to the office of the Atlantic
and Ohio Telegraph Company, and asked for work as a messenger. James
Douglas Reid, the manager, was a Scotchman, and liked the lad's manner.
"I liked the boy's looks," said Mr. Reid afterwards; "and it was easy to
see that though he was little he was full of spirit. His pay was $2.50 a
week. He had not been with me a full month when he began to ask whether
I would teach him to telegraph. I began to instruct him, and found him
an apt pupil. He spent all his spare time in practice, sending and
receiving by sound, and not by tape as was largely the custom in those
days. Pretty soon he could do as well as I could at the key, and then
his ambition carried him away beyond doing the drudgery of messenger
work."
The boy liked his new occupation. He once wrote: "My entrance into the
telegraph office was the transition from darkness to light; from firing
a small engine in a dirty cellar to a clean office where there were
books and papers. That was a paradise to me, and I bless my stars that
sent me to be a messenger-boy in a Pittsburg telegraph office."
When Andrew was fourteen his father died, leaving him the only support
of his mother and brother, seven years old. He believed in work, and
never shirked any duty, however hard.
He soon found employment as telegraph operator with the Pennsylvania
Railroad Company. At fifteen he was train-despatcher, a place of unusual
responsibility for a boy; but his energy, carefulness, and industry were
equal to the demands on him.
When he was sixteen Andrew had thought out a plan by which trains could
be run on single tracks, and the telegraph be used to govern their
running. "His scheme was the one now in universal use on the
single-tracked roads in the country; namely, to run trains in opposite
directions until they approached within comparatively a few miles, and
then hold one at a station until the other had passed." This thought
about the telegraph brought Andrew into notice among those above him;
and he was transferred to Altoona, the headquarters of the general
manager.
Young Carnegie had done what he recommends others to do in his "How to
win Fortune," in the New York _Tribune_, April 13, 1890. He says,
"George Eliot put the matter very pithily: 'I'll tell you how I got on.
I kept my ears and my eyes open, and I made my master's interest my
own.'
"The condition precedent for promotion is that the man must first
attract notice. He must do something unusual, and especially must this
be beyond the strict boundary of his duties. He must suggest, or save,
or perform some service for his employer which he could not be censured
for not having done. When he has thus attracted the notice of his
immediate superior, whether that be only the foreman of a gang, it
matters not; the first great step has been taken, for upon his immediate
superior promotion depends. How high he climbs is his own affair."
Carnegie "kept his eyes and ears open." In his "Triumphant Democracy" he
relates the following incident: "Well do I remember that, when a clerk
in the service of the Pennsylvania Railroad Company, a tall, spare,
farmer-looking kind of man came to me once when I was sitting on the end
seat of the rear car looking over the line. He said he had been told by
the conductor that I was connected with the railway company, and he
wished me to look at an invention he had made. With that he drew from a
green bag (as if it were for lawyers' briefs) a small model of a
sleeping-berth for railway cars. He had not spoken a minute before, like
a flash, the whole range of the discovery burst upon me. 'Yes,' I said,
'that is something which this continent must have.' I promised to
address him upon the subject as soon as I had talked over the matter
with my superior, Thomas A. Scott.
"I could not get that blessed sleeping-car out of my head. Upon my
return I laid it before Mr. Scott, declaring that it was one of the
inventions of the age. He remarked, 'You are enthusiastic, young man;
but you may ask the inventor to come and let me see it.' I did so; and
arrangements were made to build two trial cars, and run them on the
Pennsylvania Railroad. I was offered an interest in the venture, which,
of course, I gladly accepted. Payments were to be made ten per cent per
month after the cars were delivered, the Pennsylvania Railroad Company
guaranteeing to the builders that the cars should be kept upon its line
and under its control.
"This was all very satisfactory until the notice came that my share of
the first payment was $217.50. How well I remember the exact sum; but
two hundred and seventeen dollars and a half were as far beyond my means
as if it had been millions. I was earning fifty dollars per month,
however, and had prospects, or at least I always felt that I had. What
was to be done? I decided to call on the local banker, Mr. Lloyd, state
the case, and boldly ask him to advance the sum upon my interest in the
affair. He put his hand on my shoulder, and said, 'Why, of course,
Andie, you are all right. Go ahead. Here is the money.'
"It is a proud day for a man when he pays his last note, but not to be
named in comparison with the day in which he makes his first one, and
_gets a banker to take it_. I have tried both, and I know. The cars paid
the subsequent payments from their earnings. I paid my first note from
my savings, so much per month; and thus did I get my foot on fortune's
ladder. It is easy to climb after that. A triumphant success was
scored. And thus came sleeping-cars into the world. 'Blessed be the man
who invented sleep,' says Sancho Panza. Thousands upon thousands will
echo the sentiment, 'Blessed be the man who invented sleeping-cars.' Let
me record his name, and testify my gratitude to him, my dear, quiet,
modest, truthful, farmer-looking friend, T. T. Woodruff, one of the
benefactors of the age."
Mr. Pullman later engaged in sleeping-car building, and Carnegie advised
his firm "to capture Mr. Pullman." "There was a capture," says Mr.
Carnegie, "but it did not quite take that form. They found themselves
swallowed by this ogre, and Pullman monopolized everything."
While a very young man, Carnegie was appointed superintendent of the
Western Division of the Pennsylvania Railroad. As superintendent he
became the friend of Colonel Scott; and, together with some others, they
bought several farms along the line of the road, which proved very
valuable oil-lands. Mr. Carnegie says of the Storey Farm, Oil Creek, "We
purchased the farm for $40,000; and so small was our faith in the
ability of the earth to yield for any considerable time the hundred
barrels per day which the property was then producing, that we decided
to make a pond capable of holding one hundred thousand barrels of oil,
which we estimated would be worth, when the supply ceased, $1,000,000.
Unfortunately for us the pond leaked fearfully, evaporation also caused
much loss; but we continued to run oil in to make the losses good day
after day, until several hundred thousand barrels had gone in this
fashion.
"Our experience with the farm may be worth reciting. Its value rose to
$5,000,000; that is, the shares of the company sold in the market upon
this basis; and one year it paid in cash dividends $1,000,000--rather a
good return upon an investment of $40,000. So great was the yield in the
district that in two years oil became almost valueless, often selling as
low as thirty cents per barrel, and not infrequently it was suffered to
run to waste as utterly worthless.
"But as new uses were found for the oil, prices rose again; and to
remove the difficulty of high freights, pipes were laid, first for short
distances, and then to the seaboard, a distance of about three hundred
miles. Through these pipes, of which six thousand two hundred miles have
been laid, the oil is now pumped from two thousand one hundred wells. It
costs only ten cents to pump a barrel of oil to the Atlantic. The value
of petroleum and its products _exported_ up to January, 1884, exceeds in
value $625,000,000."
Within ten years from the time when Mr. Carnegie and his friends bought
the oil-farms, their investment had returned them four hundred and one
per cent, and the young Scotchman could count himself a rich man. Before
this, however, he had entered the iron and steel industry, in which his
great wealth has been made. With a little money which he had saved, he
borrowed $1,250 from a bank, and, with five other persons, established
the Keystone Bridge Works of Pittsburg, with the small capital of
$6,000. This was a success from the first, and in latter years has had a
capital of $1,000,000. It has built bridges all over the country, and
structural frames for many public buildings in New York, Chicago, and
other cities. From this time forward Mr. Carnegie's career has been a
most successful one. He has become chief owner in the Union Iron Works,
the Edgar Thomson Steel Works, the Homestead Steel Works, formerly a
rival company, the Duquesne Works of the Allegheny Bessemer Steel
Company, and several other iron and coke companies. The capital of these
companies is about $30,000,000, and about twenty-five thousand men are
employed.
"In 1890 Carnegie Bros. & Co., Limited," says the _Engineering and
Mining Journal_ for July 4, 1891, "had a capacity to produce 600,000
tons of steel rails per annum, or over twenty-five per cent of the total
capacity of all the rolling-mills of the United States, while its
products of steel girders, plates, nails, and other forms of
manufactured iron and steel are greater than at any other works in this
country, and exceed the amount turned out at the famous Krupp Works in
Germany." The company has supplied the United States Government with a
large amount of armor plates for our new ships, and also filled a large
order for the Russian Government.
The Edgar Thomson Steel Works have an annual capacity of 1,000,000 gross
tons of ingots, 600,000 gross tons of rails and billets, and 50,000
gross tons of castings. The Duquesne Furnaces have a yearly capacity of
700,000 gross tons of pig-iron; the Lucy Furnaces, 200,000 gross tons
yearly; the Duquesne Steel Works, an annual capacity of 450,000 gross
tons of ingots. The Homestead Steel Works have an annual capacity of
375,000 gross tons of Bessemer steel and ingots, and 400,000 gross tons
of open-hearth steel ingots. The Upper Union Mills have an annual output
of 140,000 gross tons of steel bars and steel universal mill-plates,
etc.; the Lower Union Mills, an annual capacity of 65,000 gross tons of
mill-plates, bridge-work, car-forgings, etc.
The industrious, ambitious boy was not satisfied merely to amass wealth.
He had always been a great reader and thinker. In 1883 Charles
Scribner's Sons published a book by this successful telegraph operator
and iron manufacturer, "An American Four-in-Hand in Britain." The trip
was suggested by Mr. Black's novel, "The Strange Adventures of a
Phaeton," and extended from Brighton to Inverness, a distance of eight
hundred and thirty-one miles.
Mr. Carnegie and his party of chosen friends made the journey by coach
in seven weeks, from July 17 to Aug. 3, 1881, and had a most enjoyable
as well as instructive trip. _The Critic_ gives Mr. Carnegie
well-merited praise, saying that "he has produced a book of travel as
fresh as though he had been exploring Thibet or navigating the River of
Golden Sand." The book is dedicated to "My favorite heroine, my mother,"
who was the queen dowager of the volume, and whose happiness during the
journey seemed to be the chief concern of her devoted son.
This book had so cordial a reception that the following year, 1884,
another volume was published, "Round the World," covering a trip made in
1878-1879; Mr. Carnegie having sailed from San Francisco to Japan, and
thence through the lands of the East. As he starts, his mother puts in
his hand Shakespeare in thirteen small volumes; and these are his
company and delight in the long ocean voyage. Through China, India, and
other countries, he observes closely, learns much, and tells it in a
way that is always interesting. "Life at the East," he says, "lacks two
of its most important elements,--the want of intelligent and refined
women as the companion of man, and a Sunday. It has been a strange
experience to me to be for several months without the society of some of
this class of women,--sometimes many weeks without even speaking to one,
and often a whole week without even seeing the face of an educated
woman. And, bachelor as I am, let me confess what a miserable, dark,
dreary, and insipid life this would be without their constant
companionship."
Ten years later, in 1886, Mr. Carnegie published a book that had a very
wide reading, and at once placed the author prominently before the New
World and the Old World as well, "Triumphant Democracy, or Fifty Years'
March of the Republic."
The book showed extensive research, a deep love for his adopted country,
America, a warm heart, and an able mind. He wrote: "To the beloved
Republic, under whose equal laws I am made the peer of any man, although
denied political equality by my native land, I dedicate this book, with
an intensity of gratitude and admiration which the native-born citizen
can neither feel nor understand."
No one can read this book without being amazed at the power and
possibilities of the Republic, and without a deeper love for, and pride
in the greatness and true worth of, his country. The style is bright and
attractive, and the facts stated remarkable. Americans must always be
debtors to the Scotchman who has shown them how to prize their native
land.
Mr. Carnegie wrote the book "as a labor of love," to show the people of
the Old World the advantages of a republic over a monarchical form of
government, and to Americans, "a juster estimate than prevails in some
quarters of the political and social advantages which they so abundantly
possess over the people of the older and less advanced lands, that they
may be still prouder and even more devoted, if possible, to their
institutions than they are."
Mr. Carnegie shows by undisputed facts that America, so recently a
colony of Great Britain, has now become "the wealthiest nation in the
world," "the greatest agricultural nation," "the greatest manufacturing
nation," "the greatest mining nation in the world." "In the ten years
from 1870 to 1880," says Mr. Carnegie, "eleven and a half millions were
added to the population of America. Yet these only added three persons
to each square mile of territory; and should America continue to double
her population every thirty years, instead of every twenty-five years as
hitherto, seventy years must elapse before she will attain the density
of Europe. The population will then reach two hundred and ninety
millions."
Mr. Carnegie has said in his "Imperial Federation," published in the
_Nineteenth Century_, September, 1891, "Even if the United States
increase is to be much less rapid than it has been hitherto, yet the
child is born who will see more than 400,000,000 under her sway. No
possible increase of the race can be looked for in all the world
combined comparable to this. Green truly says that its 'future home is
to be found along the banks of the Hudson and the Mississippi.'"
It will surprise many to know that "the whole United Kingdom (England,
Scotland, and Ireland) could be planted in Texas, and leave plenty of
room around it."
"The farms of America equal the entire territory of the United Kingdom,
France, Belgium, Germany, Austria, Hungary, and Portugal. The
corn-fields equal the extent of England, Scotland, and Belgium; while
the grain-fields generally would overlap Spain. The cotton-fields cover
an area larger than Holland, and twice as large as Belgium."
The growth of manufactures in America is amazing. In thirty years, from
1850 to 1880, Mr. Carnegie says there was an increase of nearly six
hundred per cent, while the increase in British manufactures was little
more than a hundred per cent. The total in America in 1880 was
$5,560,000,000; in the United Kingdom, $4,055,000,000.
"Probably the most rapid development of an industry that the world has
ever seen," says Mr. Carnegie, "is that of Bessemer steel in America."
In 1870 America made 40,000 tons of Bessemer; in 1885, fifteen years
later, she made 1,373,513 tons, which was 74,000 tons more than Great
Britain made. "This is advancing not by leaps and bounds, it is one
grand rush--a rush without pause, which has made America the greatest
manufacturer of Bessemer steel in the world.... One is startled to find
that more yards of carpet are manufactured in and around the city of
Philadelphia alone than in the whole of Great Britain. It is not twenty
years since the American imported his carpets, and now he makes more at
one point than the greatest European manufacturing nation does in all
its territory."
Of the manufacture of boots and shoes by machinery, Mr. Carnegie says,
"A man can make three hundred pairs of boots in a day, and a single
factory in Massachusetts turns out as many pairs yearly as thirty-two
thousand bootmakers in Paris.... Twenty-five years ago the American
conceived the idea of making watches by machinery upon a gigantic scale.
The principal establishment made only five watches per day as late as
1854. Now thirteen hundred per day is the daily task, and six thousand
watches per month are sent to the London agency."
The progress in mining has been equally remarkable. "To the world's
stock of gold," says Mr. Carnegie, "America has contributed, according
to Mulhall, more than fifty per cent. In 1880 he estimated the amount of
gold in the world at 10,355 tons, worth $7,240,000,000. Of this the New
World contributed 5,302 tons, or more than half. One of the most
remarkable veins of metal known is the Comstock Lode in Nevada.... In
fourteen years this single vein yielded $180,000,000. In one year, 1876,
the product of the lode was $18,000,000 in gold, and $20,500,000 in
silver,--a total of $38,500,000. Here, again, is something which the
world never saw before.
"America also leads the world in copper, the United States and Chili
contributing nearly one-half the world's supply.... On the south shore
of Lake Superior this metal is found almost pure, in masses of all
sizes, up to many tons in weight. It was used by the native Indians, and
traces of their rude mining operations are still visible."
Mr. Carnegie says the anthracite coal-fields of Pennsylvania will
produce 30,000,000 tons per year for four hundred and thirty-nine years;
and he thinks by that time "men will probably be burning the hydrogen of
water, or be fully utilizing the solar rays or the tidal energy." The
coal area of the United States comprises 300,000 square miles; and Mr.
Carnegie "is almost ashamed to confess it, she has three-quarters of all
the coal area of the earth."