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Title: Autobiography of Andrew Carnegie
Author: Andrew Carnegie
Editor: John C. Van Dyke
Release date: March 13, 2006 [eBook #17976]
Language: English
Other information and formats: www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/17976
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*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF ANDREW CARNEGIE ***
Produced by Jonathan Ingram, Linda Cantoni, and the Online
Distributed Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net
AUTOBIOGRAPHY
OF
ANDREW CARNEGIE
WITH ILLUSTRATIONS
[Illustration: [signature] Andrew Carnegie]
London
CONSTABLE & CO. LIMITED
1920
COPYRIGHT, 1920, BY LOUISE WHITFIELD CARNEGIE
ALL RIGHTS RESERVED
PREFACE
After retiring from active business my husband yielded to the earnest
solicitations of friends, both here and in Great Britain, and began to
jot down from time to time recollections of his early days. He soon
found, however, that instead of the leisure he expected, his life was
more occupied with affairs than ever before, and the writing of these
memoirs was reserved for his play-time in Scotland. For a few weeks
each summer we retired to our little bungalow on the moors at
Aultnagar to enjoy the simple life, and it was there that Mr. Carnegie
did most of his writing. He delighted in going back to those early
times, and as he wrote he lived them all over again. He was thus
engaged in July, 1914, when the war clouds began to gather, and when
the fateful news of the 4th of August reached us, we immediately left
our retreat in the hills and returned to Skibo to be more in touch
with the situation.
These memoirs ended at that time. Henceforth he was never able to
interest himself in private affairs. Many times he made the attempt to
continue writing, but found it useless. Until then he had lived the
life of a man in middle life--and a young one at that--golfing,
fishing, swimming each day, sometimes doing all three in one day.
Optimist as he always was and tried to be, even in the face of the
failure of his hopes, the world disaster was too much. His heart was
broken. A severe attack of influenza followed by two serious attacks
of pneumonia precipitated old age upon him.
It was said of a contemporary who passed away a few months before Mr.
Carnegie that "he never could have borne the burden of old age."
Perhaps the most inspiring part of Mr. Carnegie's life, to those who
were privileged to know it intimately, was the way he bore his "burden
of old age." Always patient, considerate, cheerful, grateful for any
little pleasure or service, never thinking of himself, but always of
the dawning of the better day, his spirit ever shone brighter and
brighter until "he was not, for God took him."
Written with his own hand on the fly-leaf of his manuscript are these
words: "It is probable that material for a small volume might be
collected from these memoirs which the public would care to read, and
that a private and larger volume might please my relatives and
friends. Much I have written from time to time may, I think, wisely be
omitted. Whoever arranges these notes should be careful not to burden
the public with too much. A man with a heart as well as a head should
be chosen."
Who, then, could so well fill this description as our friend Professor
John C. Van Dyke? When the manuscript was shown to him, he remarked,
without having read Mr. Carnegie's notation, "It would be a labor of
love to prepare this for publication." Here, then, the choice was
mutual, and the manner in which he has performed this "labor" proves
the wisdom of the choice--a choice made and carried out in the name of
a rare and beautiful friendship.
LOUISE WHITFIELD CARNEGIE
_New York_
_April 16, 1920_
EDITOR'S NOTE
The story of a man's life, especially when it is told by the man
himself, should not be interrupted by the hecklings of an editor. He
should be allowed to tell the tale in his own way, and enthusiasm,
even extravagance in recitation should be received as a part of the
story. The quality of the man may underlie exuberance of spirit, as
truth may be found in apparent exaggeration. Therefore, in preparing
these chapters for publication the editor has done little more than
arrange the material chronologically and sequentially so that the
narrative might run on unbrokenly to the end. Some footnotes by way of
explanation, some illustrations that offer sight-help to the text,
have been added; but the narrative is the thing.
This is neither the time nor the place to characterize or eulogize the
maker of "this strange eventful history," but perhaps it is worth
while to recognize that the history really was eventful. And strange.
Nothing stranger ever came out of the _Arabian Nights_ than the story
of this poor Scotch boy who came to America and step by step, through
many trials and triumphs, became the great steel master, built up a
colossal industry, amassed an enormous fortune, and then deliberately
and systematically gave away the whole of it for the enlightenment and
betterment of mankind. Not only that. He established a gospel of
wealth that can be neither ignored nor forgotten, and set a pace in
distribution that succeeding millionaires have followed as a
precedent. In the course of his career he became a nation-builder, a
leader in thought, a writer, a speaker, the friend of workmen,
schoolmen, and statesmen, the associate of both the lowly and the
lofty. But these were merely interesting happenings in his life as
compared with his great inspirations--his distribution of wealth, his
passion for world peace, and his love for mankind.
Perhaps we are too near this history to see it in proper proportions,
but in the time to come it should gain in perspective and in interest.
The generations hereafter may realize the wonder of it more fully than
we of to-day. Happily it is preserved to us, and that, too, in Mr.
Carnegie's own words and in his own buoyant style. It is a very
memorable record--a record perhaps the like of which we shall not look
upon again.
JOHN C. VAN DYKE
_New York_
_August, 1920_
CONTENTS
I. PARENTS AND CHILDHOOD 1
II. DUNFERMLINE AND AMERICA 20
III. PITTSBURGH AND WORK 32
IV. COLONEL ANDERSON AND BOOKS 45
V. THE TELEGRAPH OFFICE 54
VI. RAILROAD SERVICE 65
VII. SUPERINTENDENT OF THE PENNSYLVANIA 84
VIII. CIVIL WAR PERIOD 99
IX. BRIDGE-BUILDING 115
X. THE IRON WORKS 130
XI. NEW YORK AS HEADQUARTERS 149
XII. BUSINESS NEGOTIATIONS 167
XIII. THE AGE OF STEEL 181
XIV. PARTNERS, BOOKS, AND TRAVEL 198
XV. COACHING TRIP AND MARRIAGE 210
XVI. MILLS AND THE MEN 220
XVII. THE HOMESTEAD STRIKE 228
XVIII. PROBLEMS OF LABOR 240
XIX. THE "GOSPEL OF WEALTH" 255
XX. EDUCATIONAL AND PENSION FUNDS 268
XXI. THE PEACE PALACE AND PITTENCRIEFF 282
XXII. MATTHEW ARNOLD AND OTHERS 298
XXIII. BRITISH POLITICAL LEADERS 309
XXIV. GLADSTONE AND MORLEY 318
XXV. HERBERT SPENCER AND HIS DISCIPLE 333
XXVI. BLAINE AND HARRISON 341
XXVII. WASHINGTON DIPLOMACY 350
XXVIII. HAY AND MCKINLEY 358
XXIX. MEETING THE GERMAN EMPEROR 366
BIBLIOGRAPHY 373
INDEX 377
ILLUSTRATIONS
ANDREW CARNEGIE _Photogravure frontispiece_
ANDREW CARNEGIE'S BIRTHPLACE 2
DUNFERMLINE ABBEY 6
MR. CARNEGIE'S MOTHER 22
ANDREW CARNEGIE AT SIXTEEN WITH HIS BROTHER THOMAS 30
DAVID MCCARGO 38
ROBERT PITCAIRN 42
COLONEL JAMES ANDERSON 46
HENRY PHIPPS 58
THOMAS A. SCOTT 72
JOHN EDGAR THOMSON 72
THOMAS MORRISON CARNEGIE 118
GEORGE LAUDER 144
JUNIUS SPENCER MORGAN 156
JOHN PIERPONT MORGAN 172
AN AMERICAN FOUR-IN-HAND IN BRITAIN 210
ANDREW CARNEGIE (ABOUT 1878) 214
MRS. ANDREW CARNEGIE 218
MARGARET CARNEGIE AT FIFTEEN 240
CHARLES M. SCHWAB 256
THE CARNEGIE INSTITUTE AT PITTSBURGH 262
MR. CARNEGIE AND VISCOUNT BRYCE 270
MATTHEW ARNOLD 298
WILLIAM E. GLADSTONE 318
VISCOUNT MORLEY OF BLACKBURN 322
MR. CARNEGIE AND VISCOUNT MORLEY 326
THE CARNEGIE FAMILY AT SKIBO 326
HERBERT SPENCER 334
JAMES G. BLAINE 342
SKIBO CASTLE 356
MR. CARNEGIE AT SKIBO, 1914 370
AUTOBIOGRAPHY
OF
ANDREW CARNEGIE
CHAPTER I
PARENTS AND CHILDHOOD
If the story of any man's life, truly told, must be interesting, as
some sage avers, those of my relatives and immediate friends who have
insisted upon having an account of mine may not be unduly disappointed
with this result. I may console myself with the assurance that such a
story must interest at least a certain number of people who have known
me, and that knowledge will encourage me to proceed.
A book of this kind, written years ago by my friend, Judge Mellon, of
Pittsburgh, gave me so much pleasure that I am inclined to agree with
the wise one whose opinion I have given above; for, certainly, the
story which the Judge told has proved a source of infinite
satisfaction to his friends, and must continue to influence succeeding
generations of his family to live life well. And not only this; to
some beyond his immediate circle it holds rank with their favorite
authors. The book contains one essential feature of value--it reveals
the man. It was written without any intention of attracting public
notice, being designed only for his family. In like manner I intend to
tell my story, not as one posturing before the public, but as in the
midst of my own people and friends, tried and true, to whom I can
speak with the utmost freedom, feeling that even trifling incidents
may not be wholly destitute of interest for them.
To begin, then, I was born in Dunfermline, in the attic of the small
one-story house, corner of Moodie Street and Priory Lane, on the 25th
of November, 1835, and, as the saying is, "of poor but honest parents,
of good kith and kin." Dunfermline had long been noted as the center
of the damask trade in Scotland.[1] My father, William Carnegie, was a
damask weaver, the son of Andrew Carnegie after whom I was named.
[Footnote 1: The Eighteenth-Century Carnegies lived at the picturesque
hamlet of Patiemuir, two miles south of Dunfermline. The growing
importance of the linen industry in Dunfermline finally led the
Carnegies to move to that town.]
My Grandfather Carnegie was well known throughout the district for his
wit and humor, his genial nature and irrepressible spirits. He was
head of the lively ones of his day, and known far and near as the
chief of their joyous club--"Patiemuir College." Upon my return to
Dunfermline, after an absence of fourteen years, I remember being
approached by an old man who had been told that I was the grandson of
the "Professor," my grandfather's title among his cronies. He was the
very picture of palsied eld;
"His nose and chin they threatened ither."
As he tottered across the room toward me and laid his trembling hand
upon my head he said: "And ye are the grandson o' Andra Carnegie! Eh,
mon, I ha'e seen the day when your grandfaither and I could ha'e
hallooed ony reasonable man oot o' his jidgment."
[Illustration: ANDREW CARNEGIE'S BIRTHPLACE]
Several other old people of Dunfermline told me stories of my
grandfather. Here is one of them:
One Hogmanay night[2] an old wifey, quite a character in the
village, being surprised by a disguised face suddenly thrust in at the
window, looked up and after a moment's pause exclaimed, "Oh, it's jist
that daft callant Andra Carnegie." She was right; my grandfather at
seventy-five was out frightening his old lady friends, disguised like
other frolicking youngsters.
[Footnote 2: The 31st of December.]
I think my optimistic nature, my ability to shed trouble and to laugh
through life, making "all my ducks swans," as friends say I do, must
have been inherited from this delightful old masquerading grandfather
whose name I am proud to bear.[3] A sunny disposition is worth more
than fortune. Young people should know that it can be cultivated; that
the mind like the body can be moved from the shade into sunshine. Let
us move it then. Laugh trouble away if possible, and one usually can
if he be anything of a philosopher, provided that self-reproach comes
not from his own wrongdoing. That always remains. There is no washing
out of these "damned spots." The judge within sits in the supreme
court and can never be cheated. Hence the grand rule of life which
Burns gives:
"Thine own reproach alone do fear."
[Footnote 3: "There is no sign that Andrew, though he prospered in his
wooing, was specially successful in acquisition of worldly gear.
Otherwise, however, he became an outstanding character not only in the
village, but in the adjoining city and district. A 'brainy' man who
read and thought for himself he became associated with the radical
weavers of Dunfermline, who in Patiemuir formed a meeting-place which
they named a college (Andrew was the 'Professor' of it)." (_Andrew
Carnegie: His Dunfermline Ties and Benefactions_, by J.B. Mackie,
F.J.I.)]
This motto adopted early in life has been more to me than all the
sermons I ever heard, and I have heard not a few, although I may admit
resemblance to my old friend Baillie Walker in my mature years. He was
asked by his doctor about his sleep and replied that it was far from
satisfactory, he was very wakeful, adding with a twinkle in his eye:
"But I get a bit fine doze i' the kirk noo and then."
On my mother's side the grandfather was even more marked, for my
grandfather Thomas Morrison was a friend of William Cobbett, a
contributor to his "Register," and in constant correspondence with
him. Even as I write, in Dunfermline old men who knew Grandfather
Morrison speak of him as one of the finest orators and ablest men they
have known. He was publisher of "The Precursor," a small edition it
might be said of Cobbett's "Register," and thought to have been the
first radical paper in Scotland. I have read some of his writings, and
in view of the importance now given to technical education, I think
the most remarkable of them is a pamphlet which he published
seventy-odd years ago entitled "Head-ication versus Hand-ication." It
insists upon the importance of the latter in a manner that would
reflect credit upon the strongest advocate of technical education
to-day. It ends with these words, "I thank God that in my youth I
learned to make and mend shoes." Cobbett published it in the
"Register" in 1833, remarking editorially, "One of the most valuable
communications ever published in the 'Register' upon the subject, is
that of our esteemed friend and correspondent in Scotland, Thomas
Morrison, which appears in this issue." So it seems I come by my
scribbling propensities by inheritance--from both sides, for the
Carnegies were also readers and thinkers.
My Grandfather Morrison was a born orator, a keen politician, and the
head of the advanced wing of the radical party in the district--a
position which his son, my Uncle Bailie Morrison, occupied as his
successor. More than one well-known Scotsman in America has called
upon me, to shake hands with "the grandson of Thomas Morrison." Mr.
Farmer, president of the Cleveland and Pittsburgh Railroad Company,
once said to me, "I owe all that I have of learning and culture to the
influence of your grandfather"; and Ebenezer Henderson, author of the
remarkable history of Dunfermline, stated that he largely owed his
advancement in life to the fortunate fact that while a boy he entered
my grandfather's service.
I have not passed so far through life without receiving some
compliments, but I think nothing of a complimentary character has ever
pleased me so much as this from a writer in a Glasgow newspaper, who
had been a listener to a speech on Home Rule in America which I
delivered in Saint Andrew's Hall. The correspondent wrote that much
was then being said in Scotland with regard to myself and family and
especially my grandfather Thomas Morrison, and he went on to say,
"Judge my surprise when I found in the grandson on the platform, in
manner, gesture and appearance, a perfect _facsimile_ of the Thomas
Morrison of old."
My surprising likeness to my grandfather, whom I do not remember to
have ever seen, cannot be doubted, because I remember well upon my
first return to Dunfermline in my twenty-seventh year, while sitting
upon a sofa with my Uncle Bailie Morrison, that his big black eyes
filled with tears. He could not speak and rushed out of the room
overcome. Returning after a time he explained that something in me now
and then flashed before him his father, who would instantly vanish but
come back at intervals. Some gesture it was, but what precisely he
could not make out. My mother continually noticed in me some of my
grandfather's peculiarities. The doctrine of inherited tendencies is
proved every day and hour, but how subtle is the law which transmits
gesture, something as it were beyond the material body. I was deeply
impressed.
My Grandfather Morrison married Miss Hodge, of Edinburgh, a lady in
education, manners, and position, who died while the family was still
young. At this time he was in good circumstances, a leather merchant
conducting the tanning business in Dunfermline; but the peace after
the Battle of Waterloo involved him in ruin, as it did thousands; so
that while my Uncle Bailie, the eldest son, had been brought up in
what might be termed luxury, for he had a pony to ride, the younger
members of the family encountered other and harder days.
The second daughter, Margaret, was my mother, about whom I cannot
trust myself to speak at length. She inherited from her mother the
dignity, refinement, and air of the cultivated lady. Perhaps some day
I may be able to tell the world something of this heroine, but I doubt
it. I feel her to be sacred to myself and not for others to know. None
could ever really know her--I alone did that. After my father's early
death she was all my own. The dedication of my first book[4] tells the
story. It was: "To my favorite Heroine My Mother."
[Footnote 4: _An American Four-in-Hand in Great Britain._ New York,
1888.]
[Illustration: DUNFERMLINE ABBEY]
Fortunate in my ancestors I was supremely so in my birthplace. Where
one is born is very important, for different surroundings and
traditions appeal to and stimulate different latent tendencies in the
child. Ruskin truly observes that every bright boy in Edinburgh is
influenced by the sight of the Castle. So is the child of Dunfermline,
by its noble Abbey, the Westminster of Scotland, founded early in the
eleventh century (1070) by Malcolm Canmore and his Queen Margaret,
Scotland's patron saint. The ruins of the great monastery and of
the Palace where kings were born still stand, and there, too, is
Pittencrieff Glen, embracing Queen Margaret's shrine and the ruins of
King Malcolm's Tower, with which the old ballad of "Sir Patrick Spens"
begins:
"The King sits in Dunfermline _tower_,[5]
Drinking the bluid red wine."
[Footnote 5: _The Percy Reliques_ and _The Oxford Book of Ballads_
give "town" instead of "tower"; but Mr. Carnegie insisted that it
should be "tower."]
The tomb of The Bruce is in the center of the Abbey, Saint Margaret's
tomb is near, and many of the "royal folk" lie sleeping close around.
Fortunate, indeed, the child who first sees the light in that romantic
town, which occupies high ground three miles north of the Firth of
Forth, overlooking the sea, with Edinburgh in sight to the south, and
to the north the peaks of the Ochils clearly in view. All is still
redolent of the mighty past when Dunfermline was both nationally and
religiously the capital of Scotland.
The child privileged to develop amid such surroundings absorbs poetry
and romance with the air he breathes, assimilates history and
tradition as he gazes around. These become to him his real world in
childhood--the ideal is the ever-present real. The actual has yet to
come when, later in life, he is launched into the workaday world of
stern reality. Even then, and till his last day, the early impressions
remain, sometimes for short seasons disappearing perchance, but only
apparently driven away or suppressed. They are always rising and
coming again to the front to exert their influence, to elevate his
thought and color his life. No bright child of Dunfermline can escape
the influence of the Abbey, Palace, and Glen. These touch him and set
fire to the latent spark within, making him something different and
beyond what, less happily born, he would have become. Under these
inspiring conditions my parents had also been born, and hence came, I
doubt not, the potency of the romantic and poetic strain which
pervaded both.
As my father succeeded in the weaving business we removed from Moodie
Street to a much more commodious house in Reid's Park. My father's
four or five looms occupied the lower story; we resided in the upper,
which was reached, after a fashion common in the older Scottish
houses, by outside stairs from the pavement. It is here that my
earliest recollections begin, and, strangely enough, the first trace
of memory takes me back to a day when I saw a small map of America. It
was upon rollers and about two feet square. Upon this my father,
mother, Uncle William, and Aunt Aitken were looking for Pittsburgh and
pointing out Lake Erie and Niagara. Soon after my uncle and Aunt
Aitken sailed for the land of promise.
At this time I remember my cousin-brother, George Lauder ("Dod"), and
myself were deeply impressed with the great danger overhanging us
because a lawless flag was secreted in the garret. It had been painted
to be carried, and I believe was carried by my father, or uncle, or
some other good radical of our family, in a procession during the Corn
Law agitation. There had been riots in the town and a troop of cavalry
was quartered in the Guildhall. My grandfathers and uncles on both
sides, and my father, had been foremost in addressing meetings, and
the whole family circle was in a ferment.
I remember as if it were yesterday being awakened during the night by
a tap at the back window by men who had come to inform my parents that
my uncle, Bailie Morrison, had been thrown into jail because he had
dared to hold a meeting which had been forbidden. The sheriff with the
aid of the soldiers had arrested him a few miles from the town where
the meeting had been held, and brought him into the town during the
night, followed by an immense throng of people.[6]
[Footnote 6: At the opening of the Lauder Technical School in October,
1880, nearly half a century after the disquieting scenes of 1842, Mr.
Carnegie thus recalled the shock which was given to his boy mind: "One
of my earliest recollections is that of being wakened in the darkness
to be told that my Uncle Morrison was in jail. Well, it is one of the
proudest boasts I can make to-day to be able to say that I had an
uncle who was in jail. But, ladies and gentlemen, my uncle went to
jail to vindicate the rights of public assembly." (Mackie.)]
Serious trouble was feared, for the populace threatened to rescue him,
and, as we learned afterwards, he had been induced by the provost of
the town to step forward to a window overlooking the High Street and
beg the people to retire. This he did, saying: "If there be a friend
of the good cause here to-night, let him fold his arms." They did so.
And then, after a pause, he said, "Now depart in peace!"[7] My uncle,
like all our family, was a moral-force man and strong for obedience to
law, but radical to the core and an intense admirer of the American
Republic.
[Footnote 7: "The Crown agents wisely let the proceedings lapse....
Mr. Morrison was given a gratifying assurance of the appreciation of
his fellow citizens by his election to the Council and his elevation
to the Magisterial Bench, followed shortly after by his appointment to
the office of Burgh Chamberlain. The patriotic reformer whom the
criminal authorities endeavored to convict as a law-breaker became by
the choice of his fellow citizens a Magistrate, and was further given
a certificate for trustworthiness and integrity." (Mackie.)]
One may imagine when all this was going on in public how bitter were
the words that passed from one to the other in private. The
denunciations of monarchical and aristocratic government, of privilege
in all its forms, the grandeur of the republican system, the
superiority of America, a land peopled by our own race, a home for
freemen in which every citizen's privilege was every man's
right--these were the exciting themes upon which I was nurtured. As a
child I could have slain king, duke, or lord, and considered their
deaths a service to the state and hence an heroic act.
Such is the influence of childhood's earliest associations that it was
long before I could trust myself to speak respectfully of any
privileged class or person who had not distinguished himself in some
good way and therefore earned the right to public respect. There was
still the sneer behind for mere pedigree--"he is nothing, has done
nothing, only an accident, a fraud strutting in borrowed plumes; all
he has to his account is the accident of birth; the most fruitful part
of his family, as with the potato, lies underground." I wondered that
intelligent men could live where another human being was born to a
privilege which was not also their birthright. I was never tired of
quoting the only words which gave proper vent to my indignation:
"There was a Brutus once that would have brooked
Th' eternal devil to keep his state in Rome
As easily as a king."
But then kings were kings, not mere shadows. All this was inherited,
of course. I only echoed what I heard at home.
Dunfermline has long been renowned as perhaps the most radical town in
the Kingdom, although I know Paisley has claims. This is all the more
creditable to the cause of radicalism because in the days of which I
speak the population of Dunfermline was in large part composed of men
who were small manufacturers, each owning his own loom or looms. They
were not tied down to regular hours, their labors being piece work.
They got webs from the larger manufacturers and the weaving was done
at home.
These were times of intense political excitement, and there was
frequently seen throughout the entire town, for a short time after the
midday meal, small groups of men with their aprons girt about them
discussing affairs of state. The names of Hume, Cobden, and Bright
were upon every one's tongue. I was often attracted, small as I was,
to these circles and was an earnest listener to the conversation,
which was wholly one-sided. The generally accepted conclusion was that
there must be a change. Clubs were formed among the townsfolk, and the
London newspapers were subscribed for. The leading editorials were
read every evening to the people, strangely enough, from one of the
pulpits of the town. My uncle, Bailie Morrison, was often the reader,
and, as the articles were commented upon by him and others after being
read, the meetings were quite exciting.
These political meetings were of frequent occurrence, and, as might be
expected, I was as deeply interested as any of the family and attended
many. One of my uncles or my father was generally to be heard. I
remember one evening my father addressed a large outdoor meeting in
the Pends. I had wedged my way in under the legs of the hearers, and
at one cheer louder than all the rest I could not restrain my
enthusiasm. Looking up to the man under whose legs I had found
protection I informed him that was my father speaking. He lifted me on
his shoulder and kept me there.
To another meeting I was taken by my father to hear John Bright, who
spoke in favor of J.B. Smith as the Liberal candidate for the Stirling
Burghs. I made the criticism at home that Mr. Bright did not speak
correctly, as he said "men" when he meant "maan." He did not give the
broad _a_ we were accustomed to in Scotland. It is not to be wondered
at that, nursed amid such surroundings, I developed into a violent
young Republican whose motto was "death to privilege." At that time I
did not know what privilege meant, but my father did.
One of my Uncle Lauder's best stories was about this same J.B. Smith,
the friend of John Bright, who was standing for Parliament in
Dunfermline. Uncle was a member of his Committee and all went well
until it was proclaimed that Smith was a "Unitawrian." The district
was placarded with the enquiry: Would you vote for a "Unitawrian"? It
was serious. The Chairman of Smith's Committee in the village of
Cairney Hill, a blacksmith, was reported as having declared he never
would. Uncle drove over to remonstrate with him. They met in the
village tavern over a gill:
"Man, I canna vote for a Unitawrian," said the Chairman.
"But," said my uncle, "Maitland [the opposing candidate] is a
Trinitawrian."
"Damn; that's waur," was the response.
And the blacksmith voted right. Smith won by a small majority.
The change from hand-loom to steam-loom weaving was disastrous to our
family. My father did not recognize the impending revolution, and was
struggling under the old system. His looms sank greatly in value, and
it became necessary for that power which never failed in any
emergency--my mother--to step forward and endeavor to repair the
family fortune. She opened a small shop in Moodie Street and
contributed to the revenues which, though slender, nevertheless at
that time sufficed to keep us in comfort and "respectable."
I remember that shortly after this I began to learn what poverty
meant. Dreadful days came when my father took the last of his webs to
the great manufacturer, and I saw my mother anxiously awaiting his
return to know whether a new web was to be obtained or that a period
of idleness was upon us. It was burnt into my heart then that my
father, though neither "abject, mean, nor vile," as Burns has it, had
nevertheless to
"Beg a brother of the earth
To give him leave to toil."
And then and there came the resolve that I would cure that when I got
to be a man. We were not, however, reduced to anything like poverty
compared with many of our neighbors. I do not know to what lengths of
privation my mother would not have gone that she might see her two
boys wearing large white collars, and trimly dressed.
In an incautious moment my parents had promised that I should never be
sent to school until I asked leave to go. This promise I afterward
learned began to give them considerable uneasiness because as I grew
up I showed no disposition to ask. The schoolmaster, Mr. Robert
Martin, was applied to and induced to take some notice of me. He took
me upon an excursion one day with some of my companions who attended
school, and great relief was experienced by my parents when one day
soon afterward I came and asked for permission to go to Mr. Martin's
school.[8] I need not say the permission was duly granted. I had then
entered upon my eighth year, which subsequent experience leads me to
say is quite early enough for any child to begin attending school.
[Footnote 8: It was known as Rolland School.]
The school was a perfect delight to me, and if anything occurred which
prevented my attendance I was unhappy. This happened every now and
then because my morning duty was to bring water from the well at the
head of Moodie Street. The supply was scanty and irregular. Sometimes
it was not allowed to run until late in the morning and a score of old
wives were sitting around, the turn of each having been previously
secured through the night by placing a worthless can in the line.
This, as might be expected, led to numerous contentions in which I
would not be put down even by these venerable old dames. I earned the
reputation of being "an awfu' laddie." In this way I probably
developed the strain of argumentativeness, or perhaps combativeness,
which has always remained with me.
In the performance of these duties I was often late for school, but
the master, knowing the cause, forgave the lapses. In the same
connection I may mention that I had often the shop errands to run
after school, so that in looking back upon my life I have the
satisfaction of feeling that I became useful to my parents even at the
early age of ten. Soon after that the accounts of the various people
who dealt with the shop were entrusted to my keeping so that I became
acquainted, in a small way, with business affairs even in childhood.
One cause of misery there was, however, in my school experience. The
boys nicknamed me "Martin's pet," and sometimes called out that
dreadful epithet to me as I passed along the street. I did not know
all that it meant, but it seemed to me a term of the utmost
opprobrium, and I know that it kept me from responding as freely as I
should otherwise have done to that excellent teacher, my only
schoolmaster, to whom I owe a debt of gratitude which I regret I never
had opportunity to do more than acknowledge before he died.
I may mention here a man whose influence over me cannot be
overestimated, my Uncle Lauder, George Lauder's father.[9] My father
was necessarily constantly at work in the loom shop and had little
leisure to bestow upon me through the day. My uncle being a shopkeeper
in the High Street was not thus tied down. Note the location, for this
was among the shopkeeping aristocracy, and high and varied degrees of
aristocracy there were even among shopkeepers in Dunfermline. Deeply
affected by my Aunt Seaton's death, which occurred about the beginning
of my school life, he found his chief solace in the companionship of
his only son, George, and myself. He possessed an extraordinary gift
of dealing with children and taught us many things. Among others I
remember how he taught us British history by imagining each of the
monarchs in a certain place upon the walls of the room performing the
act for which he was well known. Thus for me King John sits to this
day above the mantelpiece signing the Magna Charta, and Queen Victoria
is on the back of the door with her children on her knee.
[Footnote 9: The Lauder Technical College given by Mr. Carnegie to
Dunfermline was named in honor of this uncle, George Lauder.]
It may be taken for granted that the omission which, years after, I
found in the Chapter House at Westminster Abbey was fully supplied in
our list of monarchs. A slab in a small chapel at Westminster says
that the body of Oliver Cromwell was removed from there. In the list
of the monarchs which I learned at my uncle's knee the grand
republican monarch appeared writing his message to the Pope of Rome,
informing His Holiness that "if he did not cease persecuting the
Protestants the thunder of Great Britain's cannon would be heard in
the Vatican." It is needless to say that the estimate we formed of
Cromwell was that he was worth them "a' thegither."
It was from my uncle I learned all that I know of the early history of
Scotland--of Wallace and Bruce and Burns, of Blind Harry's history, of
Scott, Ramsey, Tannahill, Hogg, and Fergusson. I can truly say in the
words of Burns that there was then and there created in me a vein of
Scottish prejudice (or patriotism) which will cease to exist only with
life. Wallace, of course, was our hero. Everything heroic centered in
him. Sad was the day when a wicked big boy at school told me that
England was far larger than Scotland. I went to the uncle, who had the
remedy.
"Not at all, Naig; if Scotland were rolled out flat as England,
Scotland would be the larger, but would you have the Highlands rolled
down?"
Oh, never! There was balm in Gilead for the wounded young patriot.
Later the greater population of England was forced upon me, and again
to the uncle I went.
"Yes, Naig, seven to one, but there were more than that odds against
us at Bannockburn." And again there was joy in my heart--joy that
there were more English men there since the glory was the greater.
This is something of a commentary upon the truth that war breeds war,
that every battle sows the seeds of future battles, and that thus
nations become traditional enemies. The experience of American boys is
that of the Scotch. They grow up to read of Washington and Valley
Forge, of Hessians hired to kill Americans, and they come to hate the
very name of Englishman. Such was my experience with my American
nephews. Scotland was all right, but England that had fought Scotland
was the wicked partner. Not till they became men was the prejudice
eradicated, and even yet some of it may linger.
Uncle Lauder has told me since that he often brought people into the
room assuring them that he could make "Dod" (George Lauder) and me
weep, laugh, or close our little fists ready to fight--in short, play
upon all our moods through the influence of poetry and song. The
betrayal of Wallace was his trump card which never failed to cause our
little hearts to sob, a complete breakdown being the invariable
result. Often as he told the story it never lost its hold. No doubt it
received from time to time new embellishments. My uncle's stories
never wanted "the hat and the stick" which Scott gave his. How
wonderful is the influence of a hero upon children!
I spent many hours and evenings in the High Street with my uncle and
"Dod," and thus began a lifelong brotherly alliance between the latter
and myself. "Dod" and "Naig" we always were in the family. I could not
say "George" in infancy and he could not get more than "Naig" out of
Carnegie, and it has always been "Dod" and "Naig" with us. No other
names would mean anything.
There were two roads by which to return from my uncle's house in the
High Street to my home in Moodie Street at the foot of the town, one
along the eerie churchyard of the Abbey among the dead, where there
was no light; and the other along the lighted streets by way of the
May Gate. When it became necessary for me to go home, my uncle, with a
wicked pleasure, would ask which way I was going. Thinking what
Wallace would do, I always replied I was going by the Abbey. I have
the satisfaction of believing that never, not even upon one occasion,
did I yield to the temptation to take the other turn and follow the
lamps at the junction of the May Gate. I often passed along that
churchyard and through the dark arch of the Abbey with my heart in my
mouth. Trying to whistle and keep up my courage, I would plod through
the darkness, falling back in all emergencies upon the thought of what
Wallace would have done if he had met with any foe, natural or
supernatural.
King Robert the Bruce never got justice from my cousin or myself in
childhood. It was enough for us that he was a king while Wallace was
the man of the people. Sir John Graham was our second. The intensity
of a Scottish boy's patriotism, reared as I was, constitutes a real
force in his life to the very end. If the source of my stock of that
prime article--courage--were studied, I am sure the final analysis
would find it founded upon Wallace, the hero of Scotland. It is a
tower of strength for a boy to have a hero.
It gave me a pang to find when I reached America that there was any
other country which pretended to have anything to be proud of. What
was a country without Wallace, Bruce, and Burns? I find in the
untraveled Scotsman of to-day something still of this feeling. It
remains for maturer years and wider knowledge to tell us that every
nation has its heroes, its romance, its traditions, and its
achievements; and while the true Scotsman will not find reason in
after years to lower the estimate he has formed of his own country and
of its position even among the larger nations of the earth, he will
find ample reason to raise his opinion of other nations because they
all have much to be proud of--quite enough to stimulate their sons so
to act their parts as not to disgrace the land that gave them birth.
It was years before I could feel that the new land could be anything
but a temporary abode. My heart was in Scotland. I resembled Principal
Peterson's little boy who, when in Canada, in reply to a question,
said he liked Canada "very well for a visit, but he could never live
so far away from the remains of Bruce and Wallace."
CHAPTER II
DUNFERMLINE AND AMERICA
My good Uncle Lauder justly set great value upon recitation in
education, and many were the pennies which Dod and I received for
this. In our little frocks or shirts, our sleeves rolled up, paper
helmets and blackened faces, with laths for swords, my cousin and
myself were kept constantly reciting Norval and Glenalvon, Roderick
Dhu and James Fitz-James to our schoolmates and often to the older
people.
I remember distinctly that in the celebrated dialogue between Norval
and Glenalvon we had some qualms about repeating the phrase,--"and
false as _hell_." At first we made a slight cough over the
objectionable word which always created amusement among the
spectators. It was a great day for us when my uncle persuaded us that
we could say "hell" without swearing. I am afraid we practiced it very
often. I always played the part of Glenalvon and made a great mouthful
of the word. It had for me the wonderful fascination attributed to
forbidden fruit. I can well understand the story of Marjory Fleming,
who being cross one morning when Walter Scott called and asked how she
was, answered:
"I am very cross this morning, Mr. Scott. I just want to say 'damn'
[with a swing], but I winna."
Thereafter the expression of the one fearful word was a great point.
Ministers could say "damnation" in the pulpit without sin, and so we,
too, had full range on "hell" in recitation. Another passage made a
deep impression. In the fight between Norval and Glenalvon, Norval
says, "When we contend again our strife is mortal." Using these words
in an article written for the "North American Review" in 1897, my
uncle came across them and immediately sat down and wrote me from
Dunfermline that he knew where I had found the words. He was the only
man living who did.
My power to memorize must have been greatly strengthened by the mode
of teaching adopted by my uncle. I cannot name a more important means
of benefiting young people than encouraging them to commit favorite
pieces to memory and recite them often. Anything which pleased me I
could learn with a rapidity which surprised partial friends. I could
memorize anything whether it pleased me or not, but if it did not
impress me strongly it passed away in a few hours.
One of the trials of my boy's life at school in Dunfermline was
committing to memory two double verses of the Psalms which I had to
recite daily. My plan was not to look at the psalm until I had started
for school. It was not more than five or six minutes' slow walk, but I
could readily master the task in that time, and, as the psalm was the
first lesson, I was prepared and passed through the ordeal
successfully. Had I been asked to repeat the psalm thirty minutes
afterwards the attempt would, I fear, have ended in disastrous
failure.
The first penny I ever earned or ever received from any person beyond
the family circle was one from my school-teacher, Mr. Martin, for
repeating before the school Burns's poem, "Man was made to Mourn." In
writing this I am reminded that in later years, dining with Mr. John
Morley in London, the conversation turned upon the life of Wordsworth,
and Mr. Morley said he had been searching his Burns for the poem to
"Old Age," so much extolled by him, which he had not been able to find
under that title. I had the pleasure of repeating part of it to him.
He promptly handed me a second penny. Ah, great as Morley is, he
wasn't my school-teacher, Mr. Martin--the first "great" man I ever
knew. Truly great was he to me. But a hero surely is "Honest John"
Morley.
In religious matters we were not much hampered. While other boys and
girls at school were compelled to learn the Shorter Catechism, Dod and
I, by some arrangement the details of which I never clearly
understood, were absolved. All of our family connections, Morrisons
and Lauders, were advanced in their theological as in their political
views, and had objections to the catechism, I have no doubt. We had
not one orthodox Presbyterian in our family circle. My father, Uncle
and Aunt Aitken, Uncle Lauder, and also my Uncle Carnegie, had fallen
away from the tenets of Calvinism. At a later day most of them found
refuge for a time in the doctrines of Swedenborg. My mother was always
reticent upon religious subjects. She never mentioned these to me nor
did she attend church, for she had no servant in those early days and
did all the housework, including cooking our Sunday dinner. A great
reader, always, Channing the Unitarian was in those days her special
delight. She was a marvel!
[Illustration: ANDREW CARNEGIE'S MOTHER]
During my childhood the atmosphere around me was in a state of violent
disturbance in matters theological as well as political. Along with
the most advanced ideas which were being agitated in the political
world--the death of privilege, the equality of the citizen,
Republicanism--I heard many disputations upon theological subjects
which the impressionable child drank in to an extent quite unthought
of by his elders. I well remember that the stern doctrines of
Calvinism lay as a terrible nightmare upon me, but that state of mind
was soon over, owing to the influences of which I have spoken. I
grew up treasuring within me the fact that my father had risen and
left the Presbyterian Church one day when the minister preached the
doctrine of infant damnation. This was shortly after I had made my
appearance.
Father could not stand it and said: "If that be your religion and that
your God, I seek a better religion and a nobler God." He left the
Presbyterian Church never to return, but he did not cease to attend
various other churches. I saw him enter the closet every morning to
pray and that impressed me. He was indeed a saint and always remained
devout. All sects became to him as agencies for good. He had
discovered that theologies were many, but religion was one. I was
quite satisfied that my father knew better than the minister, who
pictured not the Heavenly Father, but the cruel avenger of the Old
Testament--an "Eternal Torturer" as Andrew D. White ventures to call
him in his autobiography. Fortunately this conception of the Unknown
is now largely of the past.
One of the chief enjoyments of my childhood was the keeping of pigeons
and rabbits. I am grateful every time I think of the trouble my father
took to build a suitable house for these pets. Our home became
headquarters for my young companions. My mother was always looking to
home influences as the best means of keeping her two boys in the right
path. She used to say that the first step in this direction was to
make home pleasant; and there was nothing she and my father would not
do to please us and the neighbors' children who centered about us.
My first business venture was securing my companions' services for a
season as an employer, the compensation being that the young rabbits,
when such came, should be named after them. The Saturday holiday was
generally spent by my flock in gathering food for the rabbits. My
conscience reproves me to-day, looking back, when I think of the hard
bargain I drove with my young playmates, many of whom were content to
gather dandelions and clover for a whole season with me, conditioned
upon this unique reward--the poorest return ever made to labor. Alas!
what else had I to offer them! Not a penny.
I treasure the remembrance of this plan as the earliest evidence of
organizing power upon the development of which my material success in
life has hung--a success not to be attributed to what I have known or
done myself, but to the faculty of knowing and choosing others who did
know better than myself. Precious knowledge this for any man to
possess. I did not understand steam machinery, but I tried to
understand that much more complicated piece of mechanism--man.
Stopping at a small Highland inn on our coaching trip in 1898, a
gentleman came forward and introduced himself. He was Mr. MacIntosh,
the great furniture manufacturer of Scotland--a fine character as I
found out afterward. He said he had ventured to make himself known as
he was one of the boys who had gathered, and sometimes he feared
"conveyed," spoil for the rabbits, and had "one named after him." It
may be imagined how glad I was to meet him--the only one of the rabbit
boys I have met in after-life. I hope to keep his friendship to the
last and see him often. [As I read this manuscript to-day, December 1,
1913, I have a very precious note from him, recalling old times when
we were boys together. He has a reply by this time that will warm his
heart as his note did mine.]
With the introduction and improvement of steam machinery, trade grew
worse and worse in Dunfermline for the small manufacturers, and at
last a letter was written to my mother's two sisters in Pittsburgh
stating that the idea of our going to them was seriously
entertained--not, as I remember hearing my parents say, to benefit
their own condition, but for the sake of their two young sons.
Satisfactory letters were received in reply. The decision was taken to
sell the looms and furniture by auction. And my father's sweet voice
sang often to mother, brother, and me:
"To the West, to the West, to the land of the free,
Where the mighty Missouri rolls down to the sea;
Where a man is a man even though he must toil
And the poorest may gather the fruits of the soil."
The proceeds of the sale were most disappointing. The looms brought
hardly anything, and the result was that twenty pounds more were
needed to enable the family to pay passage to America. Here let me
record an act of friendship performed by a lifelong companion of my
mother--who always attracted stanch friends because she was so stanch
herself--Mrs. Henderson, by birth Ella Ferguson, the name by which she
was known in our family. She boldly ventured to advance the needful
twenty pounds, my Uncles Lauder and Morrison guaranteeing repayment.
Uncle Lauder also lent his aid and advice, managing all the details
for us, and on the 17th day of May, 1848, we left Dunfermline. My
father's age was then forty-three, my mother's thirty-three. I was in
my thirteenth year, my brother Tom in his fifth year--a beautiful
white-haired child with lustrous black eyes, who everywhere attracted
attention.
I had left school forever, with the exception of one winter's
night-schooling in America, and later a French night-teacher for a
time, and, strange to say, an elocutionist from whom I learned how to
declaim. I could read, write, and cipher, and had begun the study of
algebra and of Latin. A letter written to my Uncle Lauder during the
voyage, and since returned, shows that I was then a better penman than
now. I had wrestled with English grammar, and knew as little of what
it was designed to teach as children usually do. I had read little
except about Wallace, Bruce, and Burns; but knew many familiar pieces
of poetry by heart. I should add to this the fairy tales of childhood,
and especially the "Arabian Nights," by which I was carried into a new
world. I was in dreamland as I devoured those stories.
On the morning of the day we started from beloved Dunfermline, in the
omnibus that ran upon the coal railroad to Charleston, I remember that
I stood with tearful eyes looking out of the window until Dunfermline
vanished from view, the last structure to fade being the grand and
sacred old Abbey. During my first fourteen years of absence my thought
was almost daily, as it was that morning, "When shall I see you
again?" Few days passed in which I did not see in my mind's eye the
talismanic letters on the Abbey tower--"King Robert The Bruce." All my
recollections of childhood, all I knew of fairyland, clustered around
the old Abbey and its curfew bell, which tolled at eight o'clock every
evening and was the signal for me to run to bed before it stopped. I
have referred to that bell in my "American Four-in-Hand in
Britain"[10] when passing the Abbey and I may as well quote from it
now:
[Footnote 10: _An American Four-in-Hand in Britain_. New York, 1886.]
As we drove down the Pends I was standing on the front seat
of the coach with Provost Walls, when I heard the first toll
of the Abbey bell, tolled in honor of my mother and myself.
My knees sank from under me, the tears came rushing before I
knew it, and I turned round to tell the Provost that I must
give in. For a moment I felt as if I were about to faint.
Fortunately I saw that there was no crowd before us for a
little distance. I had time to regain control, and biting my
lips till they actually bled, I murmured to myself, "No
matter, keep cool, you must go on"; but never can there come
to my ears on earth, nor enter so deep into my soul, a sound
that shall haunt and subdue me with its sweet, gracious,
melting power as that did.
By that curfew bell I had been laid in my little couch to
sleep the sleep of childish innocence. Father and mother,
sometimes the one, sometimes the other, had told me as they
bent lovingly over me night after night, what that bell said
as it tolled. Many good words has that bell spoken to me
through their translations. No wrong thing did I do through
the day which that voice from all I knew of heaven and the
great Father there did not tell me kindly about ere I sank
to sleep, speaking the words so plainly that I knew that the
power that moved it had seen all and was not angry, never
angry, never, but so very, _very_ sorry. Nor is that bell
dumb to me to-day when I hear its voice. It still has its
message, and now it sounded to welcome back the exiled
mother and son under its precious care again.
The world has not within its power to devise, much less to
bestow upon us, such reward as that which the Abbey bell
gave when it tolled in our honor. But my brother Tom should
have been there also; this was the thought that came. He,
too, was beginning to know the wonders of that bell ere we
were away to the newer land.
Rousseau wished to die to the strains of sweet music. Could
I choose my accompaniment, I could wish to pass into the dim
beyond with the tolling of the Abbey bell sounding in my
ears, telling me of the race that had been run, and calling
me, as it had called the little white-haired child, for the
last time--_to sleep_.
I have had many letters from readers speaking of this passage in my
book, some of the writers going so far as to say that tears fell as
they read. It came from the heart and perhaps that is why it reached
the hearts of others.
We were rowed over in a small boat to the Edinburgh steamer in the
Firth of Forth. As I was about to be taken from the small boat to the
steamer, I rushed to Uncle Lauder and clung round his neck, crying
out: "I cannot leave you! I cannot leave you!" I was torn from him by
a kind sailor who lifted me up on the deck of the steamer. Upon my
return visit to Dunfermline this dear old fellow, when he came to see
me, told me it was the saddest parting he had ever witnessed.
We sailed from the Broomielaw of Glasgow in the 800-ton sailing ship
Wiscasset. During the seven weeks of the voyage, I came to know the
sailors quite well, learned the names of the ropes, and was able to
direct the passengers to answer the call of the boatswain, for the
ship being undermanned, the aid of the passengers was urgently
required. In consequence I was invited by the sailors to participate
on Sundays, in the one delicacy of the sailors' mess, plum duff. I
left the ship with sincere regret.
The arrival at New York was bewildering. I had been taken to see the
Queen at Edinburgh, but that was the extent of my travels before
emigrating. Glasgow we had not time to see before we sailed. New York
was the first great hive of human industry among the inhabitants of
which I had mingled, and the bustle and excitement of it overwhelmed
me. The incident of our stay in New York which impressed me most
occurred while I was walking through Bowling Green at Castle Garden. I
was caught up in the arms of one of the Wiscasset sailors, Robert
Barryman, who was decked out in regular Jackashore fashion, with blue
jacket and white trousers. I thought him the most beautiful man I had
ever seen.
He took me to a refreshment stand and ordered a glass of sarsaparilla
for me, which I drank with as much relish as if it were the nectar of
the gods. To this day nothing that I have ever seen of the kind rivals
the image which remains in my mind of the gorgeousness of the highly
ornamented brass vessel out of which that nectar came foaming. Often
as I have passed the identical spot I see standing there the old
woman's sarsaparilla stand, and I marvel what became of the dear old
sailor. I have tried to trace him, but in vain, hoping that if found
he might be enjoying a ripe old age, and that it might be in my power
to add to the pleasure of his declining years. He was my ideal Tom
Bowling, and when that fine old song is sung I always see as the "form
of manly beauty" my dear old friend Barryman. Alas! ere this he's gone
aloft. Well; by his kindness on the voyage he made one boy his devoted
friend and admirer.
We knew only Mr. and Mrs. Sloane in New York--parents of the
well-known John, Willie, and Henry Sloane. Mrs. Sloane (Euphemia
Douglas) was my mother's companion in childhood in Dunfermline. Mr.
Sloane and my father had been fellow weavers. We called upon them and
were warmly welcomed. It was a genuine pleasure when Willie, his son,
bought ground from me in 1900 opposite our New York residence for his
two married daughters so that our children of the third generation
became playmates as our mothers were in Scotland.
My father was induced by emigration agents in New York to take the
Erie Canal by way of Buffalo and Lake Erie to Cleveland, and thence
down the canal to Beaver--a journey which then lasted three weeks,
and is made to-day by rail in ten hours. There was no railway
communication then with Pittsburgh, nor indeed with any western town.
The Erie Railway was under construction and we saw gangs of men at
work upon it as we traveled. Nothing comes amiss to youth, and I look
back upon my three weeks as a passenger upon the canal-boat with
unalloyed pleasure. All that was disagreeable in my experience has
long since faded from recollection, excepting the night we were
compelled to remain upon the wharf-boat at Beaver waiting for the
steamboat to take us up the Ohio to Pittsburgh. This was our first
introduction to the mosquito in all its ferocity. My mother suffered
so severely that in the morning she could hardly see. We were all
frightful sights, but I do not remember that even the stinging misery
of that night kept me from sleeping soundly. I could always sleep,
never knowing "horrid night, the child of hell."
Our friends in Pittsburgh had been anxiously waiting to hear from us,
and in their warm and affectionate greeting all our troubles were
forgotten. We took up our residence with them in Allegheny City. A
brother of my Uncle Hogan had built a small weaver's shop at the back
end of a lot in Rebecca Street. This had a second story in which there
were two rooms, and it was in these (free of rent, for my Aunt Aitken
owned them) that my parents began housekeeping. My uncle soon gave up
weaving and my father took his place and began making tablecloths,
which he had not only to weave, but afterwards, acting as his own
merchant, to travel and sell, as no dealers could be found to take
them in quantity. He was compelled to market them himself, selling
from door to door. The returns were meager in the extreme.
[Illustration: ANDREW CARNEGIE AT SIXTEEN WITH HIS BROTHER THOMAS]
As usual, my mother came to the rescue. There was no keeping her down.
In her youth she had learned to bind shoes in her father's business
for pin-money, and the skill then acquired was now turned to account
for the benefit of the family. Mr. Phipps, father of my friend and
partner Mr. Henry Phipps, was, like my grandfather, a master
shoemaker. He was our neighbor in Allegheny City. Work was obtained
from him, and in addition to attending to her household duties--for,
of course, we had no servant--this wonderful woman, my mother, earned
four dollars a week by binding shoes. Midnight would often find her at
work. In the intervals during the day and evening, when household
cares would permit, and my young brother sat at her knee threading
needles and waxing the thread for her, she recited to him, as she had
to me, the gems of Scottish minstrelsy which she seemed to have by
heart, or told him tales which failed not to contain a moral.
This is where the children of honest poverty have the most precious of
all advantages over those of wealth. The mother, nurse, cook,
governess, teacher, saint, all in one; the father, exemplar, guide,
counselor, and friend! Thus were my brother and I brought up. What has
the child of millionaire or nobleman that counts compared to such a
heritage?
My mother was a busy woman, but all her work did not prevent her
neighbors from soon recognizing her as a wise and kindly woman whom
they could call upon for counsel or help in times of trouble. Many
have told me what my mother did for them. So it was in after years
wherever we resided; rich and poor came to her with their trials and
found good counsel. She towered among her neighbors wherever she
went.
CHAPTER III
PITTSBURGH AND WORK
The great question now was, what could be found for me to do. I had
just completed my thirteenth year, and I fairly panted to get to work
that I might help the family to a start in the new land. The prospect
of want had become to me a frightful nightmare. My thoughts at this
period centered in the determination that we should make and save
enough of money to produce three hundred dollars a year--twenty-five
dollars monthly, which I figured was the sum required to keep us
without being dependent upon others. Every necessary thing was very
cheap in those days.
The brother of my Uncle Hogan would often ask what my parents meant to
do with me, and one day there occurred the most tragic of all scenes I
have ever witnessed. Never can I forget it. He said, with the kindest
intentions in the world, to my mother, that I was a likely boy and apt
to learn; and he believed that if a basket were fitted out for me with
knickknacks to sell, I could peddle them around the wharves and make
quite a considerable sum. I never knew what an enraged woman meant
till then. My mother was sitting sewing at the moment, but she sprang
to her feet with outstretched hands and shook them in his face.
"What! my son a peddler and go among rough men upon the wharves! I
would rather throw him into the Allegheny River. Leave me!" she cried,
pointing to the door, and Mr. Hogan went.
She stood a tragic queen. The next moment she had broken down, but
only for a few moments did tears fall and sobs come. Then she took her
two boys in her arms and told us not to mind her foolishness. There
were many things in the world for us to do and we could be useful men,
honored and respected, if we always did what was right. It was a
repetition of Helen Macgregor, in her reply to Osbaldistone in which
she threatened to have her prisoners "chopped into as many pieces as
there are checks in the tartan." But the reason for the outburst was
different. It was not because the occupation suggested was peaceful
labor, for we were taught that idleness was disgraceful; but because
the suggested occupation was somewhat vagrant in character and not
entirely respectable in her eyes. Better death. Yes, mother would have
taken her two boys, one under each arm, and perished with them rather
than they should mingle with low company in their extreme youth.
As I look back upon the early struggles this can be said: there was
not a prouder family in the land. A keen sense of honor, independence,
self-respect, pervaded the household. Walter Scott said of Burns that
he had the most extraordinary eye he ever saw in a human being. I can
say as much for my mother. As Burns has it:
"Her eye even turned on empty space,
Beamed keen with honor."
Anything low, mean, deceitful, shifty, coarse, underhand, or gossipy
was foreign to that heroic soul. Tom and I could not help growing up
respectable characters, having such a mother and such a father, for
the father, too, was one of nature's noblemen, beloved by all, a
saint.
Soon after this incident my father found it necessary to give up
hand-loom weaving and to enter the cotton factory of Mr. Blackstock,
an old Scotsman in Allegheny City, where we lived. In this factory he
also obtained for me a position as bobbin boy, and my first work was
done there at one dollar and twenty cents per week. It was a hard
life. In the winter father and I had to rise and breakfast in the
darkness, reach the factory before it was daylight, and, with a short
interval for lunch, work till after dark. The hours hung heavily upon
me and in the work itself I took no pleasure; but the cloud had a
silver lining, as it gave me the feeling that I was doing something
for my world--our family. I have made millions since, but none of
those millions gave me such happiness as my first week's earnings. I
was now a helper of the family, a breadwinner, and no longer a total
charge upon my parents. Often had I heard my father's beautiful
singing of "The Boatie Rows" and often I longed to fulfill the last
lines of the verse:
"When Aaleck, Jock, and Jeanettie,
_Are up and got their lair_,[11]
They'll serve to gar the boatie row,
And lichten a' our care."
[Footnote 11: Education.]
I was going to make our tiny craft skim. It should be noted here that
Aaleck, Jock, and Jeanettie were first to get their education.
Scotland was the first country that required all parents, high or low,
to educate their children, and established the parish public schools.
Soon after this Mr. John Hay, a fellow-Scotch manufacturer of bobbins
in Allegheny City, needed a boy, and asked whether I would not go into
his service. I went, and received two dollars per week; but at first
the work was even more irksome than the factory. I had to run a small
steam-engine and to fire the boiler in the cellar of the bobbin
factory. It was too much for me. I found myself night after night,
sitting up in bed trying the steam gauges, fearing at one time that
the steam was too low and that the workers above would complain that
they had not power enough, and at another time that the steam was too
high and that the boiler might burst.
But all this it was a matter of honor to conceal from my parents. They
had their own troubles and bore them. I must play the man and bear
mine. My hopes were high, and I looked every day for some change to
take place. What it was to be I knew not, but that it would come I
felt certain if I kept on. Besides, at this date I was not beyond
asking myself what Wallace would have done and what a Scotsman ought
to do. Of one thing I was sure, he ought never to give up.
One day the chance came. Mr. Hay had to make out some bills. He had no
clerk, and was himself a poor penman. He asked me what kind of hand I
could write, and gave me some writing to do. The result pleased him,
and he found it convenient thereafter to let me make out his bills. I
was also good at figures; and he soon found it to be to his
interest--and besides, dear old man, I believe he was moved by good
feeling toward the white-haired boy, for he had a kind heart and was
Scotch and wished to relieve me from the engine--to put me at other
things, less objectionable except in one feature.
It now became my duty to bathe the newly made spools in vats of oil.
Fortunately there was a room reserved for this purpose and I was
alone, but not all the resolution I could muster, nor all the
indignation I felt at my own weakness, prevented my stomach from
behaving in a most perverse way. I never succeeded in overcoming the
nausea produced by the smell of the oil. Even Wallace and Bruce proved
impotent here. But if I had to lose breakfast, or dinner, I had all
the better appetite for supper, and the allotted work was done. A real
disciple of Wallace or Bruce could not give up; he would die first.
My service with Mr. Hay was a distinct advance upon the cotton
factory, and I also made the acquaintance of an employer who was very
kind to me. Mr. Hay kept his books in single entry, and I was able to
handle them for him; but hearing that all great firms kept their books
in double entry, and after talking over the matter with my companions,
John Phipps, Thomas N. Miller, and William Cowley, we all determined
to attend night school during the winter and learn the larger system.
So the four of us went to a Mr. Williams in Pittsburgh and learned
double-entry bookkeeping.
One evening, early in 1850, when I returned home from work, I was told
that Mr. David Brooks, manager of the telegraph office, had asked my
Uncle Hogan if he knew where a good boy could be found to act as
messenger. Mr. Brooks and my uncle were enthusiastic draught-players,
and it was over a game of draughts that this important inquiry was
made. Upon such trifles do the most momentous consequences hang. A
word, a look, an accent, may affect the destiny not only of
individuals, but of nations. He is a bold man who calls anything a
trifle. Who was it who, being advised to disregard trifles, said he
always would if any one could tell him what a trifle was? The young
should remember that upon trifles the best gifts of the gods often
hang.
My uncle mentioned my name, and said he would see whether I would take
the position. I remember so well the family council that was held. Of
course I was wild with delight. No bird that ever was confined in a
cage longed for freedom more than I. Mother favored, but father was
disposed to deny my wish. It would prove too much for me, he said; I
was too young and too small. For the two dollars and a half per week
offered it was evident that a much larger boy was expected. Late at
night I might be required to run out into the country with a telegram,
and there would be dangers to encounter. Upon the whole my father said
that it was best that I should remain where I was. He subsequently
withdrew his objection, so far as to give me leave to try, and I
believe he went to Mr. Hay and consulted with him. Mr. Hay thought it
would be for my advantage, and although, as he said, it would be an
inconvenience to him, still he advised that I should try, and if I
failed he was kind enough to say that my old place would be open for
me.
This being decided, I was asked to go over the river to Pittsburgh and
call on Mr. Brooks. My father wished to go with me, and it was settled
that he should accompany me as far as the telegraph office, on the
corner of Fourth and Wood Streets. It was a bright, sunshiny morning
and this augured well. Father and I walked over from Allegheny to
Pittsburgh, a distance of nearly two miles from our house. Arrived at
the door I asked father to wait outside. I insisted upon going alone
upstairs to the second or operating floor to see the great man and
learn my fate. I was led to this, perhaps, because I had by that time
begun to consider myself something of an American. At first boys used
to call me "Scotchie! Scotchie!" and I answered, "Yes, I'm Scotch and
I am proud of the name." But in speech and in address the broad Scotch
had been worn off to a slight extent, and I imagined that I could
make a smarter showing if alone with Mr. Brooks than if my good old
Scotch father were present, perhaps to smile at my airs.
I was dressed in my one white linen shirt, which was usually kept
sacred for the Sabbath day, my blue round-about, and my whole Sunday
suit. I had at that time, and for a few weeks after I entered the
telegraph service, but one linen suit of summer clothing; and every
Saturday night, no matter if that was my night on duty and I did not
return till near midnight, my mother washed those clothes and ironed
them, and I put them on fresh on Sabbath morning. There was nothing
that heroine did not do in the struggle we were making for elbow room
in the western world. Father's long factory hours tried his strength,
but he, too, fought the good fight like a hero and never failed to
encourage me.
The interview was successful. I took care to explain that I did not
know Pittsburgh, that perhaps I would not do, would not be strong
enough; but all I wanted was a trial. He asked me how soon I could
come, and I said that I could stay now if wanted. And, looking back
over the circumstance, I think that answer might well be pondered by
young men. It is a great mistake not to seize the opportunity. The
position was offered to me; something might occur, some other boy
might be sent for. Having got myself in I proposed to stay there if I
could. Mr. Brooks very kindly called the other boy--for it was an
additional messenger that was wanted--and asked him to show me about,
and let me go with him and learn the business. I soon found
opportunity to run down to the corner of the street and tell my father
that it was all right, and to go home and tell mother that I had got
the situation.
[Illustration: DAVID McCARGO]
And that is how in 1850 I got my first real start in life. From the
dark cellar running a steam-engine at two dollars a week, begrimed
with coal dirt, without a trace of the elevating influences of life, I
was lifted into paradise, yes, heaven, as it seemed to me, with
newspapers, pens, pencils, and sunshine about me. There was scarcely a
minute in which I could not learn something or find out how much there
was to learn and how little I knew. I felt that my foot was upon the
ladder and that I was bound to climb.
I had only one fear, and that was that I could not learn quickly
enough the addresses of the various business houses to which messages
had to be delivered. I therefore began to note the signs of these
houses up one side of the street and down the other. At night I
exercised my memory by naming in succession the various firms. Before
long I could shut my eyes and, beginning at the foot of a business
street, call off the names of the firms in proper order along one side
to the top of the street, then crossing on the other side go down in
regular order to the foot again.
The next step was to know the men themselves, for it gave a messenger
a great advantage, and often saved a long journey, if he knew members
or employees of firms. He might meet one of these going direct to his
office. It was reckoned a great triumph among the boys to deliver a
message upon the street. And there was the additional satisfaction to
the boy himself, that a great man (and most men are great to
messengers), stopped upon the street in this way, seldom failed to
note the boy and compliment him.
The Pittsburgh of 1850 was very different from what it has since
become. It had not yet recovered from the great fire which destroyed
the entire business portion of the city on April 10, 1845. The houses
were mainly of wood, a few only were of brick, and not one was
fire-proof. The entire population in and around Pittsburgh was not
over forty thousand. The business portion of the city did not extend
as far as Fifth Avenue, which was then a very quiet street, remarkable
only for having the theater upon it. Federal Street, Allegheny,
consisted of straggling business houses with great open spaces between
them, and I remember skating upon ponds in the very heart of the
present Fifth Ward. The site of our Union Iron Mills was then, and
many years later, a cabbage garden.
General Robinson, to whom I delivered many a telegraph message, was
the first white child born west of the Ohio River. I saw the first
telegraph line stretched from the east into the city; and, at a later
date, I also saw the first locomotive, for the Ohio and Pennsylvania
Railroad, brought by canal from Philadelphia and unloaded from a scow
in Allegheny City. There was no direct railway communication to the
East. Passengers took the canal to the foot of the Allegheny
Mountains, over which they were transported to Hollidaysburg, a
distance of thirty miles by rail; thence by canal again to Columbia,
and then eighty-one miles by rail to Philadelphia--a journey which
occupied three days.[12]
[Footnote 12: "Beyond Philadelphia was the Camden and Amboy Railway;
beyond Pittsburgh, the Fort Wayne and Chicago, separate organizations
with which we had nothing to do." (_Problems of To-day_, by Andrew
Carnegie, p. 187. New York, 1908.)]
The great event of the day in Pittsburgh at that time was the arrival
and departure of the steam packet to and from Cincinnati, for daily
communication had been established. The business of the city was
largely that of forwarding merchandise East and West, for it was the
great transfer station from river to canal. A rolling mill had begun
to roll iron; but not a ton of pig metal was made, and not a ton of
steel for many a year thereafter. The pig iron manufacture at first
was a total failure because of the lack of proper fuel, although the
most valuable deposit of coking coal in the world lay within a few
miles, as much undreamt of for coke to smelt ironstone as the stores
of natural gas which had for ages lain untouched under the city.
There were at that time not half a dozen "carriage" people in the
town; and not for many years after was the attempt made to introduce
livery, even for a coachman. As late as 1861, perhaps, the most
notable financial event which had occurred in the annals of Pittsburgh
was the retirement from business of Mr. Fahnestock with the enormous
sum of $174,000, paid by his partners for his interest. How great a
sum that seemed then and how trifling now!
My position as messenger boy soon made me acquainted with the few
leading men of the city. The bar of Pittsburgh was distinguished.
Judge Wilkins was at its head, and he and Judge MacCandless, Judge
McClure, Charles Shaler and his partner, Edwin M. Stanton, afterwards
the great War Secretary ("Lincoln's right-hand man") were all well
known to me--the last-named especially, for he was good enough to take
notice of me as a boy. In business circles among prominent men who
still survive, Thomas M. Howe, James Park, C.G. Hussey, Benjamin F.
Jones, William Thaw, John Chalfant, Colonel Herron were great men to
whom the messenger boys looked as models, and not bad models either,
as their lives proved. [Alas! all dead as I revise this paragraph in
1906, so steadily moves the solemn procession.]
My life as a telegraph messenger was in every respect a happy one,
and it was while in this position that I laid the foundation of my
closest friendships. The senior messenger boy being promoted, a new
boy was needed, and he came in the person of David McCargo, afterwards
the well-known superintendent of the Allegheny Valley Railway. He was
made my companion and we had to deliver all the messages from the
Eastern line, while two other boys delivered the messages from the
West. The Eastern and Western Telegraph Companies were then separate,
although occupying the same building. "Davy" and I became firm friends
at once, one great bond being that he was Scotch; for, although "Davy"
was born in America, his father was quite as much a Scotsman, even in
speech, as my own father.
A short time after "Davy's" appointment a third boy was required, and
this time I was asked if I could find a suitable one. This I had no
difficulty in doing in my chum, Robert Pitcairn, later on my successor
as superintendent and general agent at Pittsburgh of the Pennsylvania
Railroad. Robert, like myself, was not only Scotch, but Scotch-born,
so that "Davy," "Bob," and "Andy" became the three Scotch boys who
delivered all the messages of the Eastern Telegraph Line in
Pittsburgh, for the then magnificent salary of two and a half dollars
per week. It was the duty of the boys to sweep the office each
morning, and this we did in turn, so it will be seen that we all began
at the bottom. Hon. H.W. Oliver,[13] head of the great manufacturing
firm of Oliver Brothers, and W.C. Morland,[14] City Solicitor,
subsequently joined the corps and started in the same fashion. It is
not the rich man's son that the young struggler for advancement has to
fear in the race of life, nor his nephew, nor his cousin. Let him look
out for the "dark horse" in the boy who begins by sweeping out the
office.
[Footnote 13: Died 1904.]
[Footnote 14: Died 1889.]
[Illustration: ROBERT PITCAIRN]
A messenger boy in those days had many pleasures. There were wholesale
fruit stores, where a pocketful of apples was sometimes to be had for
the prompt delivery of a message; bakers' and confectioners' shops,
where sweet cakes were sometimes given to him. He met with very kind
men, to whom he looked up with respect; they spoke a pleasant word and
complimented him on his promptness, perhaps asked him to deliver a
message on the way back to the office. I do not know a situation in
which a boy is more apt to attract attention, which is all a really
clever boy requires in order to rise. Wise men are always looking out
for clever boys.
One great excitement of this life was the extra charge of ten cents
which we were permitted to collect for messages delivered beyond a
certain limit. These "dime messages," as might be expected, were
anxiously watched, and quarrels arose among us as to the right of
delivery. In some cases it was alleged boys had now and then taken a
dime message out of turn. This was the only cause of serious trouble
among us. By way of settlement I proposed that we should "pool" these
messages and divide the cash equally at the end of each week. I was
appointed treasurer. Peace and good-humor reigned ever afterwards.
This pooling of extra earnings not being intended to create artificial
prices was really coöperation. It was my first essay in financial
organization.
The boys considered that they had a perfect right to spend these
dividends, and the adjoining confectioner's shop had running accounts
with most of them. The accounts were sometimes greatly overdrawn. The
treasurer had accordingly to notify the confectioner, which he did in
due form, that he would not be responsible for any debts contracted by
the too hungry and greedy boys. Robert Pitcairn was the worst offender
of all, apparently having not only one sweet tooth, but all his teeth
of that character. He explained to me confidentially one day, when I
scolded him, that he had live things in his stomach that gnawed his
insides until fed upon sweets.
CHAPTER IV
COLONEL ANDERSON AND BOOKS
With all their pleasures the messenger boys were hard worked. Every
other evening they were required to be on duty until the office
closed, and on these nights it was seldom that I reached home before
eleven o'clock. On the alternating nights we were relieved at six.
This did not leave much time for self-improvement, nor did the wants
of the family leave any money to spend on books. There came, however,
like a blessing from above, a means by which the treasures of
literature were unfolded to me.
Colonel James Anderson--I bless his name as I write--announced that he
would open his library of four hundred volumes to boys, so that any
young man could take out, each Saturday afternoon, a book which could
be exchanged for another on the succeeding Saturday. My friend, Mr.
Thomas N. Miller, reminded me recently that Colonel Anderson's books
were first opened to "working boys," and the question arose whether
messenger boys, clerks, and others, who did not work with their hands,
were entitled to books. My first communication to the press was a
note, written to the "Pittsburgh Dispatch," urging that we should not
be excluded; that although we did not now work with our hands, some of
us had done so, and that we were really working boys.[15] Dear Colonel
Anderson promptly enlarged the classification. So my first appearance
as a public writer was a success.
[Footnote 15: The note was signed "Working Boy." The librarian
responded in the columns of the _Dispatch_ defending the rules, which
he claimed meant that "a Working Boy should have a trade." Carnegie's
rejoinder was signed "A Working Boy, though without a Trade," and a
day or two thereafter the _Dispatch_ had an item on its editorial page
which read: "Will 'a Working Boy without a Trade' please call at this
office." (David Homer Bates in _Century Magazine_, July, 1908.)]
My dear friend, Tom Miller, one of the inner circle, lived near
Colonel Anderson and introduced me to him, and in this way the windows
were opened in the walls of my dungeon through which the light of
knowledge streamed in. Every day's toil and even the long hours of
night service were lightened by the book which I carried about with me
and read in the intervals that could be snatched from duty. And the
future was made bright by the thought that when Saturday came a new
volume could be obtained. In this way I became familiar with
Macaulay's essays and his history, and with Bancroft's "History of the
United States," which I studied with more care than any other book I
had then read. Lamb's essays were my special delight, but I had at
this time no knowledge of the great master of all, Shakespeare, beyond
the selected pieces in the school books. My taste for him I acquired a
little later at the old Pittsburgh Theater.
John Phipps, James R. Wilson, Thomas N. Miller, William
Cowley--members of our circle--shared with me the invaluable privilege
of the use of Colonel Anderson's library. Books which it would have
been impossible for me to obtain elsewhere were, by his wise
generosity, placed within my reach; and to him I owe a taste for
literature which I would not exchange for all the millions that were
ever amassed by man. Life would be quite intolerable without it.
Nothing contributed so much to keep my companions and myself clear of
low fellowship and bad habits as the beneficence of the good
Colonel. Later, when fortune smiled upon me, one of my first duties
was the erection of a monument to my benefactor. It stands in front of
the Hall and Library in Diamond Square, which I presented to
Allegheny, and bears this inscription:
To Colonel James Anderson, Founder of Free Libraries in
Western Pennsylvania. He opened his Library to working boys
and upon Saturday afternoons acted as librarian, thus
dedicating not only his books but himself to the noble work.
This monument is erected in grateful remembrance by Andrew
Carnegie, one of the "working boys" to whom were thus opened
the precious treasures of knowledge and imagination through
which youth may ascend.
[Illustration: COLONEL JAMES ANDERSON]
This is but a slight tribute and gives only a faint idea of the depth
of gratitude which I feel for what he did for me and my companions. It
was from my own early experience that I decided there was no use to
which money could be applied so productive of good to boys and girls
who have good within them and ability and ambition to develop it, as
the founding of a public library in a community which is willing to
support it as a municipal institution. I am sure that the future of
those libraries I have been privileged to found will prove the
correctness of this opinion. For if one boy in each library district,
by having access to one of these libraries, is half as much benefited
as I was by having access to Colonel Anderson's four hundred well-worn
volumes, I shall consider they have not been established in vain.
"As the twig is bent the tree's inclined." The treasures of the world
which books contain were opened to me at the right moment. The
fundamental advantage of a library is that it gives nothing for
nothing. Youths must acquire knowledge themselves. There is no escape
from this. It gave me great satisfaction to discover, many years
later, that my father was one of the five weavers in Dunfermline who
gathered together the few books they had and formed the first
circulating library in that town.
The history of that library is interesting. It grew, and was removed
no less than seven times from place to place, the first move being
made by the founders, who carried the books in their aprons and two
coal scuttles from the hand-loom shop to the second resting-place.
That my father was one of the founders of the first library in his
native town, and that I have been fortunate enough to be the founder
of the last one, is certainly to me one of the most interesting
incidents of my life. I have said often, in public speeches, that I
had never heard of a lineage for which I would exchange that of a
library-founding weaver.[16] I followed my father in library founding
unknowingly--I am tempted almost to say providentially--and it has
been a source of intense satisfaction to me. Such a father as mine was
a guide to be followed--one of the sweetest, purest, and kindest
natures I have ever known.
[Footnote 16: "It's a God's mercy we are all from honest weavers; let
us pity those who haven't ancestors of whom they can be proud, dukes
or duchesses though they be." (_Our Coaching Trip_, by Andrew
Carnegie. New York, 1882.)]
I have stated that it was the theater which first stimulated my love
for Shakespeare. In my messenger days the old Pittsburgh Theater was
in its glory under the charge of Mr. Foster. His telegraphic business
was done free, and the telegraph operators were given free admission
to the theater in return. This privilege extended in some degree also
to the messengers, who, I fear, sometimes withheld telegrams that
arrived for him in the late afternoon until they could be presented
at the door of the theater in the evening, with the timid request
that the messenger might be allowed to slip upstairs to the second
tier--a request which was always granted. The boys exchanged duties to
give each the coveted entrance in turn.
In this way I became acquainted with the world that lay behind the
green curtain. The plays, generally, were of the spectacular order;
without much literary merit, but well calculated to dazzle the eye of
a youth of fifteen. Not only had I never seen anything so grand, but I
had never seen anything of the kind. I had never been in a theater, or
even a concert room, or seen any form of public amusement. It was much
the same with "Davy" McCargo, "Harry" Oliver, and "Bob" Pitcairn. We
all fell under the fascination of the footlights, and every
opportunity to attend the theater was eagerly embraced.
A change in my tastes came when "Gust" Adams,[17] one of the most
celebrated tragedians of the day, began to play in Pittsburgh a round
of Shakespearean characters. Thenceforth there was nothing for me but
Shakespeare. I seemed to be able to memorize him almost without
effort. Never before had I realized what magic lay in words. The
rhythm and the melody all seemed to find a resting-place in me, to
melt into a solid mass which lay ready to come at call. It was a new
language and its appreciation I certainly owe to dramatic
representation, for, until I saw "Macbeth" played, my interest in
Shakespeare was not aroused. I had not read the plays.
[Footnote 17: Edwin Adams.]
At a much later date, Wagner was revealed to me in "Lohengrin." I had
heard at the Academy of Music in New York, little or nothing by him
when the overture to "Lohengrin" thrilled me as a new revelation.
Here was a genius, indeed, differing from all before, a new ladder
upon which to climb upward--like Shakespeare, a new friend.
I may speak here of another matter which belongs to this same period.
A few persons in Allegheny--probably not above a hundred in all--had
formed themselves into a Swedenborgian Society, in which our American
relatives were prominent. My father attended that church after leaving
the Presbyterian, and, of course, I was taken there. My mother,
however, took no interest in Swedenborg. Although always inculcating
respect for all forms of religion, and discouraging theological
disputes, she maintained for herself a marked reserve. Her position
might best be defined by the celebrated maxim of Confucius: "To
perform the duties of this life well, troubling not about another, is
the prime wisdom."
She encouraged her boys to attend church and Sunday school; but there
was no difficulty in seeing that the writings of Swedenborg, and much
of the Old and New Testaments had been discredited by her as unworthy
of divine authorship or of acceptance as authoritative guides for the
conduct of life. I became deeply interested in the mysterious
doctrines of Swedenborg, and received the congratulations of my devout
Aunt Aitken upon my ability to expound "spiritual sense." That dear
old woman fondly looked forward to a time when I should become a
shining light in the New Jerusalem, and I know it was sometimes not
beyond the bounds of her imagination that I might blossom into what
she called a "preacher of the Word."
As I more and more wandered from man-made theology these fond hopes
weakened, but my aunt's interest in and affection for her first
nephew, whom she had dandled on her knee in Scotland, never waned. My
cousin, Leander Morris, whom she had some hopes of saving through the
Swedenborgian revelation, grievously disappointed her by actually
becoming a Baptist and being dipped. This was too much for the
evangelist, although she should have remembered her father passed
through that same experience and often preached for the Baptists in
Edinburgh.
Leander's reception upon his first call after his fall was far from
cordial. He was made aware that the family record had suffered by his
backsliding when at the very portals of the New Jerusalem revealed by
Swedenborg and presented to him by one of the foremost disciples--his
aunt. He began deprecatingly:
"Why are you so hard on me, aunt? Look at Andy, he is not a member of
any church and you don't scold him. Surely the Baptist Church is
better than none."
The quick reply came:
"Andy! Oh! Andy, he's naked, but you are clothed in rags."
He never quite regained his standing with dear Aunt Aitken. I might
yet be reformed, being unattached; but Leander had chosen a sect and
that sect not of the New Jerusalem.
It was in connection with the Swedenborgian Society that a taste for
music was first aroused in me. As an appendix to the hymn-book of the
society there were short selections from the oratorios. I fastened
instinctively upon these, and although denied much of a voice, yet
credited with "expression," I was a constant attendant upon choir
practice. The leader, Mr. Koethen, I have reason to believe, often
pardoned the discords I produced in the choir because of my enthusiasm
in the cause. When, at a later date, I became acquainted with the
oratorios in full, it was a pleasure to find that several of those
considered in musical circles as the gems of Handel's musical
compositions were the ones that I as an ignorant boy had chosen as
favorites. So the beginning of my musical education dates from the
small choir of the Swedenborgian Society of Pittsburgh.
I must not, however, forget that a very good foundation was laid for
my love of sweet sounds in the unsurpassed minstrelsy of my native
land as sung by my father. There was scarcely an old Scottish song
with which I was not made familiar, both words and tune. Folk-songs
are the best possible foundation for sure progress to the heights of
Beethoven and Wagner. My father being one of the sweetest and most
pathetic singers I ever heard, I probably inherited his love of music
and of song, though not given his voice. Confucius' exclamation often
sounds in my ears: "Music, sacred tongue of God! I hear thee calling
and I come."
An incident of this same period exhibits the liberality of my parents
in another matter. As a messenger boy I had no holidays, with the
exception of two weeks given me in the summer-time, which I spent
boating on the river with cousins at my uncle's at East Liverpool,
Ohio. I was very fond of skating, and in the winter about which I am
speaking, the slack water of the river opposite our house was
beautifully frozen over. The ice was in splendid condition, and
reaching home late Saturday night the question arose whether I might
be permitted to rise early in the morning and go skating before church
hours. No question of a more serious character could have been
submitted to ordinary Scottish parents. My mother was clear on the
subject, that in the circumstances I should be allowed to skate as
long as I liked. My father said he believed it was right I should go
down and skate, but he hoped I would be back in time to go with him to
church.
I suppose this decision would be arrived at to-day by nine hundred and
ninety-nine out of every thousand homes in America, and probably also
in the majority of homes in England, though not in Scotland. But those
who hold to-day that the Sabbath in its fullest sense was made for
man, and who would open picture galleries and museums to the public,
and make the day somewhat of a day of enjoyment for the masses instead
of pressing upon them the duty of mourning over sins largely
imaginary, are not more advanced than were my parents forty years ago.
They were beyond the orthodox of the period when it was scarcely
permissible, at least among the Scotch, to take a walk for pleasure or
read any but religious books on the Sabbath.
CHAPTER V
THE TELEGRAPH OFFICE
I had served as messenger about a year, when Colonel John P. Glass,
the manager of the downstairs office, who came in contact with the
public, began selecting me occasionally to watch the office for a few
minutes during his absence. As Mr. Glass was a highly popular man, and
had political aspirations, these periods of absence became longer and
more frequent, so that I soon became an adept in his branch of the
work. I received messages from the public and saw that those that came
from the operating-room were properly assigned to the boys for prompt
delivery.
This was a trying position for a boy to fill, and at that time I was
not popular with the other boys, who resented my exemption from part
of my legitimate work. I was also taxed with being penurious in my
habits--mean, as the boys had it. I did not spend my extra dimes, but
they knew not the reason. Every penny that I could save I knew was
needed at home. My parents were wise and nothing was withheld from me.
I knew every week the receipts of each of the three who were
working--my father, my mother, and myself. I also knew all the
expenditures. We consulted upon the additions that could be made to
our scanty stock of furniture and clothing and every new small article
obtained was a source of joy. There never was a family more united.
Day by day, as mother could spare a silver half-dollar, it was
carefully placed in a stocking and hid until two hundred were
gathered, when I obtained a draft to repay the twenty pounds so
generously lent to us by her friend Mrs. Henderson. That was a day we
celebrated. The Carnegie family was free from debt. Oh, the happiness
of that day! The debt was, indeed, discharged, but the debt of
gratitude remains that never can be paid. Old Mrs. Henderson lives
to-day. I go to her house as to a shrine, to see her upon my visits to
Dunfermline; and whatever happens she can never be forgotten. [As I
read these lines, written some years ago, I moan, "Gone, gone with the
others!" Peace to the ashes of a dear, good, noble friend of my
mother's.]
The incident in my messenger life which at once lifted me to the
seventh heaven, occurred one Saturday evening when Colonel Glass was
paying the boys their month's wages. We stood in a row before the
counter, and Mr. Glass paid each one in turn. I was at the head and
reached out my hand for the first eleven and a quarter dollars as they
were pushed out by Mr. Glass. To my surprise he pushed them past me
and paid the next boy. I thought it was a mistake, for I had
heretofore been paid first, but it followed in turn with each of the
other boys. My heart began to sink within me. Disgrace seemed coming.
What had I done or not done? I was about to be told that there was no
more work for me. I was to disgrace the family. That was the keenest
pang of all. When all had been paid and the boys were gone, Mr. Glass
took me behind the counter and said that I was worth more than the
other boys, and he had resolved to pay me thirteen and a half dollars
a month.
My head swam; I doubted whether I had heard him correctly. He counted
out the money. I don't know whether I thanked him; I don't believe I
did. I took it and made one bound for the door and scarcely stopped
until I got home. I remember distinctly running or rather bounding
from end to end of the bridge across the Allegheny River--inside on
the wagon track because the foot-walk was too narrow. It was Saturday
night. I handed over to mother, who was the treasurer of the family,
the eleven dollars and a quarter and said nothing about the remaining
two dollars and a quarter in my pocket--worth more to me then than all
the millions I have made since.
Tom, a little boy of nine, and myself slept in the attic together, and
after we were safely in bed I whispered the secret to my dear little
brother. Even at his early age he knew what it meant, and we talked
over the future. It was then, for the first time, I sketched to him
how we would go into business together; that the firm of "Carnegie
Brothers" would be a great one, and that father and mother should yet
ride in their carriage. At the time that seemed to us to embrace
everything known as wealth and most of what was worth striving for.
The old Scotch woman, whose daughter married a merchant in London,
being asked by her son-in-law to come to London and live near them,
promising she should "ride in her carriage," replied:
"What good could it do me to ride in a carriage gin I could na be seen
by the folk in Strathbogie?" Father and mother would not only be seen
in Pittsburgh, but should visit Dunfermline, their old home, in style.
On Sunday morning with father, mother, and Tom at breakfast, I
produced the extra two dollars and a quarter. The surprise was great
and it took some moments for them to grasp the situation, but it soon
dawned upon them. Then father's glance of loving pride and mother's
blazing eye soon wet with tears, told their feeling. It was their
boy's first triumph and proof positive that he was worthy of
promotion. No subsequent success, or recognition of any kind, ever
thrilled me as this did. I cannot even imagine one that could. Here
was heaven upon earth. My whole world was moved to tears of joy.
Having to sweep out the operating-room in the mornings, the boys had
an opportunity of practicing upon the telegraph instruments before the
operators arrived. This was a new chance. I soon began to play with
the key and to talk with the boys who were at the other stations who
had like purposes to my own. Whenever one learns to do anything he has
never to wait long for an opportunity of putting his knowledge to use.
One morning I heard the Pittsburgh call given with vigor. It seemed to
me I could divine that some one wished greatly to communicate. I
ventured to answer, and let the slip run. It was Philadelphia that
wanted to send "a death message" to Pittsburgh immediately. Could I
take it? I replied that I would try if they would send slowly. I
succeeded in getting the message and ran out with it. I waited
anxiously for Mr. Brooks to come in, and told him what I had dared to
do. Fortunately, he appreciated it and complimented me, instead of
scolding me for my temerity; yet dismissing me with the admonition to
be very careful and not to make mistakes. It was not long before I was
called sometimes to watch the instrument, while the operator wished to
be absent, and in this way I learned the art of telegraphy.
We were blessed at this time with a rather indolent operator, who was
only too glad to have me do his work. It was then the practice for us
to receive the messages on a running slip of paper, from which the
operator read to a copyist, but rumors had reached us that a man in
the West had learned to read by sound and could really take a message
by ear. This led me to practice the new method. One of the operators
in the office, Mr. Maclean, became expert at it, and encouraged me by
his success. I was surprised at the ease with which I learned the new
language. One day, desiring to take a message in the absence of the
operator, the old gentleman who acted as copyist resented my
presumption and refused to "copy" for a messenger boy. I shut off the
paper slip, took pencil and paper and began taking the message by ear.
I shall never forget his surprise. He ordered me to give him back his
pencil and pad, and after that there was never any difficulty between
dear old Courtney Hughes and myself. He was my devoted friend and
copyist.
Soon after this incident Joseph Taylor, the operator at Greensburg,
thirty miles from Pittsburgh, wishing to be absent for two weeks,
asked Mr. Brooks if he could not send some one to take his place. Mr.
Brooks called me and asked whether I thought I could do the work. I
replied at once in the affirmative.
"Well," he said, "we will send you out there for a trial."
I went out in the mail stage and had a most delightful trip. Mr. David
Bruce, a well-known solicitor of Scottish ancestry, and his sister
happened to be passengers. It was my first excursion, and my first
glimpse of the country. The hotel at Greensburg was the first public
house in which I had ever taken a meal. I thought the food wonderfully
fine.
[Illustration: HENRY PHIPPS]
This was in 1852. Deep cuts and embankments near Greensburg were then
being made for the Pennsylvania Railroad, and I often walked out in
the early morning to see the work going forward, little dreaming that
I was so soon to enter the service of that great corporation. This
was the first responsible position I had occupied in the telegraph
service, and I was so anxious to be at hand in case I should be
needed, that one night very late I sat in the office during a storm,
not wishing to cut off the connection. I ventured too near the key and
for my boldness was knocked off my stool. A flash of lightning very
nearly ended my career. After that I was noted in the office for
caution during lightning storms. I succeeded in doing the small
business at Greensburg to the satisfaction of my superiors, and
returned to Pittsburgh surrounded with something like a halo, so far
as the other boys were concerned. Promotion soon came. A new operator
was wanted and Mr. Brooks telegraphed to my afterward dear friend
James D. Reid, then general superintendent of the line, another fine
specimen of the Scotsman, and took upon himself to recommend me as an
assistant operator. The telegram from Louisville in reply stated that
Mr. Reid highly approved of promoting "Andy," provided Mr. Brooks
considered him competent. The result was that I began as a telegraph
operator at the tremendous salary of twenty-five dollars per month,
which I thought a fortune. To Mr. Brooks and Mr. Reid I owe my
promotion from the messenger's station to the operating-room.[18] I
was then in my seventeenth year and had served my apprenticeship. I
was now performing a man's part, no longer a boy's--earning a dollar
every working day.
[Footnote 18: "I liked the boy's looks, and it was very easy to see
that though he was little he was full of spirit. He had not been with
me a month when he began to ask whether I would teach him to
telegraph. I began to instruct him and found him an apt pupil." (James
D. Reid, _The Telegraph in America_, New York, 1879.)
Reid was born near Dunfermline and forty years afterwards Mr. Carnegie
was able to secure for him the appointment of United States Consul at
Dunfermline.]
The operating-room of a telegraph office is an excellent school for a
young man. He there has to do with pencil and paper, with composition
and invention. And there my slight knowledge of British and European
affairs soon stood me in good stead. Knowledge is sure to prove useful
in one way or another. It always tells. The foreign news was then
received by wire from Cape Race, and the taking of successive "steamer
news" was one of the most notable of our duties. I liked this better
than any other branch of the work, and it was soon tacitly assigned to
me.
The lines in those days worked poorly, and during a storm much had to
be guessed at. My guessing powers were said to be phenomenal, and it
was my favorite diversion to fill up gaps instead of interrupting the
sender and spending minutes over a lost word or two. This was not a
dangerous practice in regard to foreign news, for if any undue
liberties were taken by the bold operator, they were not of a
character likely to bring him into serious trouble. My knowledge of
foreign affairs became somewhat extensive, especially regarding the
affairs of Britain, and my guesses were quite safe, if I got the first
letter or two right.
The Pittsburgh newspapers had each been in the habit of sending a
reporter to the office to transcribe the press dispatches. Later on
one man was appointed for all the papers and he suggested that
multiple copies could readily be made of the news as received, and it
was arranged that I should make five copies of all press dispatches
for him as extra work for which he was to pay me a dollar per week.
This, my first work for the press, yielded very modest remuneration,
to be sure; but it made my salary thirty dollars per month, and every
dollar counted in those days. The family was gradually gaining
ground; already future millionairedom seemed dawning.
Another step which exercised a decided influence over me was joining
the "Webster Literary Society" along with my companions, the trusty
five already named. We formed a select circle and stuck closely
together. This was quite an advantage for all of us. We had before
this formed a small debating club which met in Mr. Phipps's father's
room in which his few journeymen shoemakers worked during the day. Tom
Miller recently alleged that I once spoke nearly an hour and a half
upon the question, "Should the judiciary be elected by the people?"
but we must mercifully assume his memory to be at fault. The "Webster"
was then the foremost club in the city and proud were we to be thought
fit for membership. We had merely been preparing ourselves in the
cobbler's room.
I know of no better mode of benefiting a youth than joining such a
club as this. Much of my reading became such as had a bearing on
forthcoming debates and that gave clearness and fixity to my ideas.
The self-possession I afterwards came to have before an audience may
very safely be attributed to the experience of the "Webster Society."
My two rules for speaking then (and now) were: Make yourself perfectly
at home before your audience, and simply talk _to_ them, not _at_
them. Do not try to be somebody else; be your own self and _talk_,
never "orate" until you can't help it.
I finally became an operator by sound, discarding printing entirely.
The accomplishment was then so rare that people visited the office to
be satisfied of the extraordinary feat. This brought me into such
notice that when a great flood destroyed all telegraph communication
between Steubenville and Wheeling, a distance of twenty-five miles, I
was sent to the former town to receive the entire business then
passing between the East and the West, and to send every hour or two
the dispatches in small boats down the river to Wheeling. In exchange
every returning boat brought rolls of dispatches which I wired East,
and in this way for more than a week the entire telegraphic
communication between the East and the West _via_ Pittsburgh was
maintained.
While at Steubenville I learned that my father was going to Wheeling
and Cincinnati to sell the tablecloths he had woven. I waited for the
boat, which did not arrive till late in the evening, and went down to
meet him. I remember how deeply affected I was on finding that instead
of taking a cabin passage, he had resolved not to pay the price, but
to go down the river as a deck passenger. I was indignant that one of
so fine a nature should be compelled to travel thus. But there was
comfort in saying:
"Well, father, it will not be long before mother and you shall ride in
your carriage."
My father was usually shy, reserved, and keenly sensitive, very saving
of praise (a Scotch trait) lest his sons might be too greatly
uplifted; but when touched he lost his self-control. He was so upon
this occasion, and grasped my hand with a look which I often see and
can never forget. He murmured slowly:
"Andra, I am proud of you."
The voice trembled and he seemed ashamed of himself for saying so
much. The tear had to be wiped from his eye, I fondly noticed, as he
bade me good-night and told me to run back to my office. Those words
rang in my ear and warmed my heart for years and years. We understood
each other. How reserved the Scot is! Where he feels most he
expresses least. Quite right. There are holy depths which it is
sacrilege to disturb. Silence is more eloquent than words. My father
was one of the most lovable of men, beloved of his companions, deeply
religious, although non-sectarian and non-theological, not much of a
man of the world, but a man all over for heaven. He was kindness
itself, although reserved. Alas! he passed away soon after returning
from this Western tour just as we were becoming able to give him a
life of leisure and comfort.
After my return to Pittsburgh it was not long before I made the
acquaintance of an extraordinary man, Thomas A. Scott, one to whom the
term "genius" in his department may safely be applied. He had come to
Pittsburgh as superintendent of that division of the Pennsylvania
Railroad. Frequent telegraphic communication was necessary between him
and his superior, Mr. Lombaert, general superintendent at Altoona.
This brought him to the telegraph office at nights, and upon several
occasions I happened to be the operator. One day I was surprised by
one of his assistants, with whom I was acquainted, telling me that Mr.
Scott had asked him whether he thought that I could be obtained as his
clerk and telegraph operator, to which this young man told me he had
replied:
"That is impossible. He is now an operator."
But when I heard this I said at once:
"Not so fast. He can have me. I want to get out of a mere office life.
Please go and tell him so."
The result was I was engaged February 1, 1853, at a salary of
thirty-five dollars a month as Mr. Scott's clerk and operator. A raise
in wages from twenty-five to thirty-five dollars per month was the
greatest I had ever known. The public telegraph line was temporarily
put into Mr. Scott's office at the outer depot and the Pennsylvania
Railroad Company was given permission to use the wire at seasons when
such use would not interfere with the general public business, until
their own line, then being built, was completed.
CHAPTER VI
RAILROAD SERVICE
From the operating-room of the telegraph office I had now stepped into
the open world, and the change at first was far from agreeable. I had
just reached my eighteenth birthday, and I do not see how it could be
possible for any boy to arrive at that age much freer from a knowledge
of anything but what was pure and good. I do not believe, up to that
time, I had ever spoken a bad word in my life and seldom heard one. I
knew nothing of the base and the vile. Fortunately I had always been
brought in contact with good people.
I was now plunged at once into the company of coarse men, for the
office was temporarily only a portion of the shops and the
headquarters for the freight conductors, brakemen, and firemen. All of
them had access to the same room with Superintendent Scott and myself,
and they availed themselves of it. This was a different world, indeed,
from that to which I had been accustomed. I was not happy about it. I
ate, necessarily, of the fruit of the tree of knowledge of good and
evil for the first time. But there were still the sweet and pure
surroundings of home, where nothing coarse or wicked ever entered, and
besides, there was the world in which I dwelt with my companions, all
of them refined young men, striving to improve themselves and become
respected citizens. I passed through this phase of my life detesting
what was foreign to my nature and my early education. The experience
with coarse men was probably beneficial because it gave me a "scunner"
(disgust), to use a Scotism, at chewing or smoking tobacco, also at
swearing or the use of improper language, which fortunately remained
with me through life.
I do not wish to suggest that the men of whom I have spoken were
really degraded or bad characters. The habit of swearing, with coarse
talk, chewing and smoking tobacco, and snuffing were more prevalent
then than to-day and meant less than in this age. Railroading was new,
and many rough characters were attracted to it from the river service.
But many of the men were fine young fellows who have lived to be
highly respectable citizens and to occupy responsible positions. And I
must say that one and all of them were most kin