What a characteristic story of poverty and pluck is that of
Andrew Carnegie! His father, a Scotch weaver who worked with
hand-looms, thrown out of employment by improved machinery,
came to Pittsburg when “Andy” was but ten years of age. The boy
went to work as a bobbin-boy at $1.20 a week. At thirteen he
was promoted to the post of engineer of the factory engine. At
fourteen he became telegraph boy, and was promoted at sixteen,
for quick intelligence, to the post of telegraph operator at
a salary of $300 a year. About this time his father died, and
the support of the family devolved on him. He soon got a dollar
a week extra for copying telegrams for the papers, which he
called his “first bit of capital.” His salary went for household
expenses, but the dollar surplus he invested wisely, first in
the express business, then in sleeping-cars, and, finally, as an
outcome of his management of transportation in the Civil War, in
a plant to manufacture iron railway bridges. And so by alertness
and economy and untiring energy he came to be the world’s most
distinguished manufacturer and philanthropist, putting as much
talent into giving as he had before put into getting.
(2395)
See COURAGE IN LIFE; STEDFASTNESS.