“There is no doubt,” said Mr. Carnegie, in reply to a question from me,
“that it is becoming harder and harder, as business gravitates more
and more to immense concerns, for a young man without capital to get
a start for himself, and in large cities it is especially so, where
large capital is essential. Still it can be honestly said that there
is no other country in the world, where able and energetic young men
and women can so readily rise as in this. A president of a business
college informed me, recently, that he has never been able to supply
the demand for capable, first-class [Mark the adjective] bookkeepers,
and his college has over nine hundred students. In America, young men
of ability rise with most astonishing rapidity.”
“As quickly as when you were a boy?”
“Much more so. When I was a boy, there were but very few important
positions that a boy could aspire to. Everything had to be made. Now a
boy doesn’t need to make the place,—all he has to do is to fit himself
to take it.”
“Did you make your high places as you went along?”
“I shouldn’t call them high, and I did not make the earliest ones. In
starting new enterprises, of course, I made my place at the head of
them. The earliest ones were the poorest kinds of positions, however.”
“Where did you begin life?”
“In Dunfermline, Scotland. That was only my home during my earliest
years. The service of my life has all been in this country.”
“In Pittsburg?”
“Largely so. My father settled in Allegheny City, when I was only ten
years old, and I began to earn my way in Pittsburg.”
“Do you mind telling me what your first service was?”
“Not at all. I was a bobbin boy in a cotton factory, then an engine-man
or boy in the same place, and later still I was a messenger boy for a
telegraph company.”