Carnegie

by Raymond Lamont-Brown

  The year 1848 might well be described as the Year of Revolution; in February the weak French King Louis Philippe abdicated and fled to England following the republican and socialist revolution in Paris; and violence erupted in Italy, Austria and Germany. Meanwhile in Britain the Chartist Rising led by MP Fergus O’Connor failed and the movement was laughed out of existence. In Dunfermline the Carnegies put up their household goods to public ‘roup’ (auction), but the struggling local economy meant that the prices they received were low. Even with their meagre savings, they still did not have the amount needed for their passage to America. A loan of £20 from Margaret’s childhood friend Ailie Henderson at last allowed the plans to go forward.27

  The Carnegies’ relations were dismayed at their emigration plans. Tom Morrison resolutely refused to help in any way. He considered his sister’s plans to be madness. Smarting at the failure of revolution in Britain, he openly called his brother-in-law William a traitor for fleeing the workers’ struggle at home. William Carnegie’s sister Charlotte Drysdale was less negative and cashed in her insurance money to give them £2 10s. William was tearfully touched: ‘If ever I’ve anything,’ he said, ‘I’ll mind ye.’28 Margaret Carnegie’s brother-in-law George Lauder was unhappy and sceptical about the wisdom of their venture, but he helped make reservations for them aboard the 800-ton Wiscasset, a three-masted, square-rigged sailing vessel due to leave Glasgow’s Broomielaw pier on 17 May 1848. For the Carnegies the die was finally cast.

  THREE

  VOYAGE TO AMERICA

  Working-men always do reciprocate kindly feeling. If we truly care for others we need not be anxious about their feelings for us. Like draws to like.

  Autobiography, 1920

  The leaving of Dunfermline was a sad wrench for 13-year-old Andrew Carnegie. Tom Morrison, George Lauder and cousin Dod accompanied the Carnegies the handful of miles on the horse-drawn coal railway omnibus to Charlestown, the model village created in the late eighteenth century by Charles, 5th Earl of Elgin. Tearfully Andrew watched as the old abbey, with the ‘talismanic letters’ set around its tower roof spelling the name of Robert I, the Bruce, receded and vanished in the distance.

  At Charlestown quay, which exported lime to farmers all over Scotland, the Carnegies were ferried by rowing boat to the steamer for Edinburgh anchored in the Forth. ‘I canna leave you! I canna leave you!’ young Andrew sobbed to his uncle George, who, pressing a sovereign coin into his hand, tried to comfort the boy. Young Andrew was pulled from his embrace and placed into the boat. Thus, under a cloud of sadness the Carnegies left the Firth of Forth they knew so well and via the Union Canal journeyed to Glasgow and the piers of the Broomielaw on the River Clyde. Here they joined the other passengers: weavers, labourers and farmers all eager for a new life away from their beloved but troubled Scotland. That year, 188,233 British emigrants sailed to America to reforge their lives.1

  Their uncomfortable journey in steerage began on 19 May 1848 as the Maine-built Wiscasset breasted the Atlantic out of the Firth of Clyde. Andrew Carnegie remembered the voyage:

  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.2

  What Carnegie did not detail were the horrors of the passage itself. Seasickness was rife and petty theft of belongings was an everyday occurrence, while becalmed days put pressure on the dwindling water and food supplies that the passengers had had to furnish themselves. All feared the outbreak of cholera, and deaths on board added to the deterioration of passenger morale.

  Some seven weeks after setting out, the Wiscasset docked off Castle Garden, New York Harbour. The Carnegies had arrived in America but immediately had to push on to Pittsburgh. However, there were two familiar faces to greet them at New York. Margaret Carnegie’s childhood friend Euphemia Douglas, now Mrs James Sloan, and her weaver husband steered them towards the next leg of their journey. Andrew Carnegie was ‘bewildered’ at what he saw of New York. While his father haggled with the shipping agents for their onward travel tickets, and over a glass of sarsaparilla in the company of Wiscasset sailor Robert Barryman, Andrew Carnegie observed the ‘bustle and excitement’ of New York.

  From New York City they passed into New York State, up the Hudson River to Albany, thence by the Erie Canal to Rochester and Buffalo; via Lake Erie they went to Cleveland, Ohio, and on a portion of the Ohio & Erie Canal, and thence by land to Beaver and finally to Pittsburgh. The last leg of their journey was aboard a paddle steamer from Cincinnati, via Beaver, and here for the first time Andrew Carnegie encountered the American genus of mosquitoes, giving them all a ‘horrid’ last night aboard.

  Here at the junction of the Allegheny and Monogahela rivers was the grimy city with which Andrew Carnegie’s name would be immortally linked. In those days the area around Pittsburgh was synonymous with floods, fires and regular visitations of fever. Located in western Pennsylvania, around 110 miles from Lake Erie, the city dated from the eighteenth century and was blessed with rich coal seams, and with salt and iron works; Andrew Carnegie was to earn it the name ‘Steel City’. The city had originally been named in honour of William Pitt, Earl of Chatham. His adjutant-general in America Brigadier John Forbes captured Fort Duquesne from the French and on 27 November 1758 informed Chatham that the fort had been renamed in his honour. In Forbes’s ranks were many Scots Highlanders who eventually settled in the area, and the Carnegies would mix with their descendants. But what was the city like when Andrew Carnegie arrived in 1848? The city of some 40,000 souls had not yet recovered from the great fire of 10 April 1845, which had caused widespread devastation because few houses were made of brick, and there was still an air of desolation over the commercial heart. Yet if one word summed up Andrew Carnegie’s first view of the city, that word was ‘bustle’.

  Soon after landing the Carnegies made their way to the suburb of Allegheny, where Margaret Carnegie’s sisters lived, and received an exuberant welcome. Andrew Aitken had recently died, so Margaret Carnegie’s sister Annie lived with her twin Kitty, and Kitty’s husband Thomas Hogan. Their dwelling was a frame house at 336 Rebecca Street. The house was the property of Tom Hogan’s brother Andrew, and adjoining was a house owned by Annie and rented to Andrew Hogan. Two unoccupied rooms on the second floor of this property were to be the Carnegies’ first home in America. As a bonus they were to live rent-free. Annie and Tom could afford a little generosity. Tom had a regular wage as a clerk in a crockery shop, while Annie now ran a small grocery store.3

  Financially the Carnegies were on their uppers. Their surroundings, though generously given, were squalid. Not for nothing was the suburb of Allegheny better known as Slabtown. The area had developed by 1848 from a fur-trading post to a burgeoning industrial area of 20,000 people; in the eastern enclave dwelt mostly Germans, while in the west the inhabitants included many Scots and Irish. But the area was greatly polluted by the many tanneries and typhus was a daily hazard. Allegheny’s population, which exceeded that of Dunfermline in 1848 by some 7,000, thrived on a network of family-run workshops, which mirrored what Dunfermline had once been. Abounding too, was a spirit that reflected that found in Dunfermline: a feeling of self-dependence, individual freedom and a strong work ethic to delight the heart of any Scots Presbyterian. One other emotion was familiar to the Carnegies. Just as workers had gone on strike in Dunfermline, soon after the arrival of the Carnegies in Pittsburgh came the Cotton Mill Riots and Allegheny was rife with industrial discontent which would give the place a history of worker violence.

  William Carnegie rented a handloom from Andrew Hogan and set to work immediately, but now he was to produce no fine damasks as he had for the homes of the Scottish middle class, only cheaper napery
and ticking. Again, once his products were made, William had to peddle them where he could. Margaret also went to work in their new home binding shoes for neighbourhood cobbler Henry Phipps at $4 a week. She was helped by her son Tom who sat at her side on a stool waxing thread and threading needles. As it turned out, Margaret earned more than her husband.4 William Carnegie was a skilled craftsman, but for him America was not to be the golden promised land and slowly he became more demoralised.

  Andrew Carnegie soon acclimatised to his new surroundings. His first friends were John and Henry Phipps, the sons of his mother’s employer. Small for his age and with flaxen hair shading to white, Andrew stood out among the other boys of the neighbourhood. The native Allegheny boys were nicknamed ‘Bottom Hoosiers’, after the Allegheny river bottom. Andrew’s thick Dunfermline accent was incomprehensible to the Hoosiers, who would taunt him with cries of ‘Scotchie’. Andrew countered with, ‘Aye, I am Scotchie, and I’m prood o’ the name.’ After a while Andrew was accepted and became a ‘Hoosier’ himself.5

  As the summer of 1848 drew on to autumn 13-year-old Andrew Carnegie looked about him for paid employment, his mother ever at his shoulder to advise on work that she considered would be too demeaning. This provoked an incident Andrew Carnegie never forgot. Undoubtedly with good intentions, Thomas Hogan suggested that young Andrew be given a basket full of knick-knacks to sell along the Allegheny quays. His mother was incandescent with rage: ‘What? My son a pedlar and go among rough men upon the wharves! I would rather throw him into the Allegheny River. Leave me!’6 Hogan hastily retreated.

  The Scots immigrants of this part of America operated a sort of news network regarding possible employment. The cotton-mill strikes had ended and William Carnegie obtained work at Blackstock’s Cotton Mill in Robinson Street, run by a fellow Scot, and brought home word that there was work for Andrew. There the boy could have a job as a bobbin boy at $1.20 a week.

  Father and son seized their opportunities, often beginning work before daybreak and returning home in the dark. From the windows of their home in Moodie Street Andrew had often watched the children at Dunfermline set off early in the morning for the mine and mill, and he too now set off for his first job. The millions of dollars he later made, he remarked in his autobiography, never gave him more pleasure than his first week’s wages. Soon though, Andrew was to move to John Hay’s bobbin factory on Lacock Street for a better wage of $2 a week. His work now included supervising a steam engine and its hungry boiler. He recalled:

  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.7

  It was a lonely job and involved too much responsibility for a boy of Andrew’s age. But he persisted: ‘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.’8 He was right.

  FOUR

  THE INDUSTRIOUS APPRENTICE

  Andrew Carnegie believed that if knowledge was made available to each man, he would find a happy, useful place in the scheme of things.

  Clara Ingram Judson (1879–1963), biographer

  Determined not to give up on the hope that a new opportunity would present itself, Andrew Carnegie was soon to get his chance. He was approached by John Hay to write some letters, Hay being ‘a poor penman’. Thereafter Carnegie was employed to prepare the bills sent out to customers; this led, too, to dealing with current correspondence. The new work was not taxing and Carnegie fitted it in alongside an added duty of oiling textile spools, a job he found nauseous because of the smell of the oil, but he persisted.

  As he proceeded with John Hay’s bookkeeping, Carnegie discovered that while the single-entry accounting system he was using was adequate, bigger firms utilised a double-entry format. So, along with his new friends William Cowley, Thomas Miller and John Phipps, he went to William’s accountancy evening class in double-entry at Pittsburgh during the winter of 1848/9. Another opportunity too was beckoning.

  Returning home from work in the early spring of 1850, Carnegie learned from his uncle Thomas Hogan that his draughts-playing companion David Brooks, manager of the Henry O’Reilly Atlantic and Ohio Telegraph Co., was looking for a competent boy messenger for the telegraph office. Would Andrew like to be considered? A family council took place. His father was against the offer: he considered Andrew ‘too young and too small’ and feared that the late-night deliveries might take his son into the dangerous haunts of gamblers, whores and drunks. Eventually, though, William Carnegie was outvoted and Andrew Carnegie followed up the vacancy.1 So one sunny morning Carnegie, dressed in his best (and only) white linen shirt and blue Sunday-best suit and accompanied by his father as far as the office block, walked the 2 miles from Allegheny to Pittsburgh to the telegraph office at Fourth and Wood Street.2 The interview was short and to the point. Andrew Carnegie got the job, for which he was to be paid $2.50 per week; he considered it ‘my first real start in life’.3 In his delight in starting the job immediately, Andrew Carnegie almost forgot his father waiting outside; suddenly remembering him, he rapidly downed tools to run out and tell him all was well and that he could go home. The other staff in the office, when Carnegie was introduced to them by fellow telegraph boy George McLain, looked askance at the small stature of their new colleague. Would anyone so small be able to carry out the duties of messenger? They were doubtful. No one in the office ever realised how driven Andrew Carnegie was by the need to stave off poverty. He was determined never to sink back into the penury they had endured at Dunfermline.4

  Carnegie plunged into his new job with enthusiasm, his finely honed memory soaking up business names, company addresses and street locations of the telegraph company’s clients. He had told David Brooks at his interview for the job that he did not know Pittsburgh but within weeks he was even able to identify the managers, agents and important employees of the various firms by name, so that he might deliver messages personally and to the right person. This way he could be recognised by those who mattered. He derived great pride from his new company uniform of dark green jacket and knickerbockers, loose breeches gathered at the knee.5

  After the fire of 10 April 1845 the business area of Pittsburgh was devastated but the city’s streets, alleys and sidewalks still teemed with horses and wagons, and a multitude of hawkers, merchants and loafers all contributing to a public din Carnegie had never experienced in Dunfermline. Because of the fire the business premises were scattered but Carnegie soon knew every remaining building intimately, and more importantly he learned which people were the movers and shakers of the city. In particular he made himself known to prominent members of the Pittsburgh bar, such as judges Wilkins, MacCandless, McClure and Shaler; another such was Edwin McMasters Stanton (1814–69), who went on to become Secretary of War in Abraham Lincoln’s Republican administration of 1861–5. Carnegie began to whet his appetite for acquaintance with the ‘great’ and modelled himself on the Pittsburgh businessmen he met on his delivery rounds.6

  In his new position Andrew Carnegie began to forge new friendships. William Cowley, John Phipps and Thomas Miller were joined by James R. Wilson and James Smith, and together they enter the Carnegie story as ‘The Original Six’, all bent on bettering themselves.7 Enjoying rambles together, exploring the environs of Pittsburgh, they regularly met by the White Horse Tavern – where the Pittsburgh borough council assembled – to argue and debate, much as grandfather Carnegie had done at the Pattiesmuir ‘college’ – although unlike grandfather Carnegie the teetotal six abstained from liquor. Andrew Carnegie’s fellow messenger on the eastern section of the telegraph company’s area was David McCargo, and the pair were later joined by Robert Pitcairn. Together they shared their duties of office-cleaning and pole-climbing to repair telegraph wires. The work was hard, but there were
high spots too. The boys received tips of fruit and cakes from customers who purveyed such delicacies, but they also received cash tips of up to 10 cents a time for messages ‘delivered beyond a certain limit’.8 The cash tips were a cause for friction among the messengers, especially if one recipient was suspected of taking such a job out of turn. So Andrew Carnegie suggested that all the tips should be pooled and divided up equally at the end of each week; the suggestion was agreed and Carnegie acted as treasurer of the fund. ‘It was my first essay in financial organisation,’ he later noted.9

  To his fellows, Andrew Carnegie appeared a bit of a prig and a prude; he tended to remove himself from a group telling dirty jokes, and hissily criticised anybody he thought was overindulging in food. As treasurer of the tips pool, he persuaded the local food shops not to extend credit to the messenger boys in anticipation of shared tips. His Scottish sense of morality also caused him to look down on those who smoked or devoured sweetmeats.10

  Andrew Carnegie savoured his busy employment, sometimes working until after 10pm, but regretted that he had little time and opportunity to advance himself intellectually. At present there was no spare cash for books. But his access to books was to receive a boost when Colonel James Anderson, founder of several free libraries in western Pennsylvania, decided to open his huge library of books to ‘working boys’ every Saturday. Did young white-collar employees come into this category of borrowers? Carnegie wrote a note to the Pittsburgh Dispatch to clarify the matter – ‘my first communication to the press’.11 Colonel Anderson’s librarian replied that the library rules meant ‘a Working Boy should have a trade’ to qualify as a free borrower. Carnegie took up his pen again to argue the point, signing himself ‘A Working Boy though without a Trade’. His determination encouraged Colonel Anderson to widen the catchment of library borrowers and Carnegie won plaudits from his special friends who were now exempt from the $2 borrowing fee. Thereafter Andrew Carnegie was never without a new book to hand from Anderson’s collection, be it his favourite, Charles Lamb’s Essays of Elia (1823), or Thomas Babington Macaulay’s Essays (1843), or the primer on his new homeland, George Bancroft’s ten volume History of the United States (1834).