Carnegie

by Raymond Lamont-Brown

  Another incident at this time nearly scuppered Carnegie for good with the railway. Thomas A. Scott was away from the office and so was not available to deal with a disciplinary matter. An accident happened which was entirely due to the negligence of a railway ballast crew. In such serious matters it was company policy to hold a ‘court martial’. Confident in the role that Scott had given him, Carnegie held his own court martial into the incident.8 Having identified the culprits, he sacked one and suspended two others for four weeks without pay. It put him in bad odour with the workforce, foreshadowing Carnegie’s poor labour relations at another time and another place. He had certainly exceeded his authority; Scott knew it, but took no further action and let Carnegie’s decision stand.

  Then there was the occasion of the letter. Among the businessmen of Pittsburgh there had been some criticism of the Pennsylvania Railroad. As a consequence Robert M. Riddel’s Pittsburgh Journal had published an anonymous letter in support of the railroad. Who had written it? Colonel Niles A. Stokes, lawyer for the railway, telegraphed Thomas A. Scott to ascertain who had written it . . . in his opinion some congratulation was due. Scott duly investigated and Carnegie admitted that he was the author. Scott was ‘incredulous’ and Carnegie smugly noted, ‘The pen was getting to be a weapon with me.’9 Very soon after this, an invitation came for Carnegie to spend one Sunday with Stokes at Greensburg. Carnegie leapt at the opportunity and recalled:

  The grandure [sic] of Mr Stokes’s home impressed me, but the one feature of it that eclipsed all else was a marble mantel in his library. In the centre of the arch, carved in marble, was an open book with the inscription:

  He that cannot reason is a fool,

  He that will not a bigot,

  He that dare not a slave.

  These noble words thrilled me. I said to myself, ‘Some day, some day, I’ll have a library . . . and these words shall grace the mantel as here.’10

  In future years the ‘noble words’ of the quotation which had ‘thrilled’ him graced the mantel of his library at Skibo Castle.

  Andrew Carnegie prospered and his salary was advanced to $40, drawn in two $20 gold coins. They were, he said, ‘the prettiest works of art in the world’.11 His euphoria at his advancement was tempered by the decline of his father. In these early American years William Carnegie had contributed little or nothing to the family purse. Much of his woven material lay stacked in the house unsold. He also endured extended weeks of ill health. Despite everything, he had still not come to terms with life in America. Unlike his elder son, William Carnegie was not interested in American history or politics, and even when he became eligible for American citizenship he showed little interest. It was only because of Andrew’s nagging that on 20 November 1854 he presented himself to the Court of General Sessions for Allegheny County where the clerk received his declaration of intent. William would have to wait two years before the naturalisation would become lawful after taking a final oath. This never happened for William Carnegie died on 2 October 1855. The fact that his father had presented himself to the Court of General Sessions at all was lodged in Andrew Carnegie’s mind and he felt that this amounted to William becoming an American citizen; as he was considered a minor at the time, then he too was a citizen of America. Technically, however, Andrew Carnegie was never an American citizen; although his future enemies taunted him with this fact, his wealth and position meant that no one ever openly challenged his claim to American citizenship.

  Andrew Carnegie greatly mourned his father’s passing. He said: ‘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.’12 Despite his grief, Andrew Carnegie took on the greater burden of organising the family’s daily life and ensuring that the loan for the house on Rebecca Street was paid off. His mother continued her shoe-binding and his 12-year-old brother Tom progressed to secondary education.

  Carnegie’s life was a round of work, socialising with his close friends, writing to his cousin Dod at Dunfermline and hoovering up information about local commerce. One event of national importance was interesting him too: the rise of the Republican party, which held an important meeting at Pittsburgh on 22 February 1856. In the late eighteenth century the evolution of the French revolutionary republic and the execution of Louis XIV had brought the development of political parties in America into fine focus, and by 1795–6 the Republicans had become a force to be reckoned with, supporting policies based on ‘liberty and humanity’. Since Andrew Jackson’s presidency of 1828, America had been governed by a succession of Democrat and Whig administrations. Carnegie was excited about what the Republicans had to say about anti-slavery and the promotion of land reform. Somehow land ownership and the exploitation of wealth for personal prosperity and common good was slowly being distanced from the radical socialist atmosphere of his childhood Dunfermline. Although he was not yet old enough to vote, Carnegie considered himself a member of the Republican party and gave voice to their policies.

  Carnegie was soon about to undertake his first real venture into capitalism. Thomas A. Scott asked him if he had $500 to spare for a particular investment in a package delivery company which traded with the Pennsylvania Railroad.13 The shares had suddenly come on the market when their owner Mrs Ann Patrick had need to raise cash.14 Carnegie did not have that kind of money but he was not going to let that confound his chances of hitching up to Scott’s financial wagon. He discussed the matter with his mother, and they decided a loan would have to be taken out. Carnegie agreed to the deal and was overjoyed when Scott himself loaned him the $500 (plus the premium of $110) on 17 May 1856, payable by November. Thus Carnegie made his first investment: ten shares in the stock of the Adams Express Co. were his and would pay him a monthly return. His first dividend cheque of $10, drawn on the Gold Exchange Bank of New York, would be emblazoned on his memory for ever:

  I shall remember that cheque as long as I live, and that . . . signature of ‘J.C. Babcock, Cashier’. It gave me the first penny of revenue from capital – something that I had not worked for with the sweat of my brow. ‘Eureka!’ I cried. ‘Here’s the goose that lays the golden eggs.’15

  All did not go smoothly. Carnegie was unable to pay off the loan by November 1856, and had to borrow what was owed at an 8 per cent rate of interest, higher than his return. With his mother’s agreement the house at Rebecca Street supported the loan, and by 1858 the debt was cleared. More significantly Carnegie had shown a willingness to undertake a complicated loans return to support a financial risk. This lesson would make him rich.

  By the autumn of 1856 the now-widowed Thomas A. Scott succeeded Herman Lombaert as General Superintendent of the Pennsylvania Railway. He thus relocated to Altoona and Andrew Carnegie accompanied him as secretary, working at the Altoona office at a new salary of $50 per month. Until Scott acquired a permanent home for his children, both he and Carnegie lived at the Altoona railway hotel: ‘He seemed anxious always to have me near him,’ noted Carnegie.16

  Scott inherited a troubled office. There had already been strikes among the freight men, and now the maintenance men threatened a walkout in the important depot at Altoona. J. Edgar Thomson was bent on cutting costs for the Pennsylvania Railroad and proposed a wage reduction of 10–25 per cent on a range of manual jobs. When the cuts became effective on 1 November 1857, the railwaymen rebelled.

  In his autobiography Carnegie offers a curious story about how he helped to break the impending strike. It seems that one night he was walking back to the hotel in Altoona when he ‘became aware that a man was following me’. Eventually the man approached him. Explaining that Carnegie had once found the man a job as a blacksmith at Pittsburgh and that he would like to return the favour, he said that papers had been circulated to the maintenance men urging them to strike the following Monday. He listed the names of the strike leaders and supporters. Carnegie immediately informed Scott. Next morning Scott orde
red the posting of notices in the maintenance shops naming the men Carnegie had been told about and detailing their dismissal. With satisfaction Carnegie noted ‘the threatened strike was broken’.17

  These were changed days for Andrew Carnegie; here was the young revolutionary from Dunfermline who had cheered on the weavers’ strikes almost glorying in the role of strikebreaker. Would not the Morrisons be turning in their graves? Certainly Carnegie put any such thoughts out of his mind, remarking:

  It counts many times more to a kindness to a poor workingman than to a millionaire, who may be able some day to repay the favour. How true Wordsworth’s lines:

  That best portion of a good man’s life –

  His little, nameless, unremembered acts

  Of kindness and of love.18

  The self-satisfaction he derived from his role as a strike-breaker caused Andrew Carnegie to become more cocky and dogmatic in his attitude. He augmented his 5ft 3in stature and his baby-faced demeanour with grave clothes, weighty boots and a capacious overcoat. But now he was learning to combine his arrogance with charm and to project his personality better at work and social gatherings.

  As the spring of 1857 passed, Carnegie was able to bring his family from Pittsburgh to Altoona. They sold their house at Slabtown for $1500.19 At Carnegie’s insistence, despite his mother’s reluctance, a servant was hired. Soon a cook was also added to the household, but Carnegie acknowledged that his mother never took to having strangers in the house. ‘She had cooked [for] and served her boys,’ he said, ‘washed their clothes and mended them, made their beds, cleaned their home. Who dare rob her of those motherly privileges!’20

  Free at last from the pollution of Pittsburgh, the Carnegies enjoyed the rural setting of Altoona and Carnegie took up horse-riding. He bought a fiery horse called ‘Dash’ and thundered about the countryside with an incautiousness that made friends and neighbours gasp. Because he only occasionally saw his old friends McCargo, Miller and Pitcairn, Carnegie lived a rather lonely existence in Altoona. Soon, though, gossips were linking his name to that of an eligible female.

  Rebecca Stewart came to Altoona to act as hostess and child-carer for her widowed uncle Thomas A. Scott. At the time Rebecca was around 25 and Carnegie 23, and both were lacking in company:

  [Rebecca] played the part of the elder sister to me to perfection, especially when Mr Scott was called to Philadelphia or elsewhere. We were much together, often driving in the afternoons through the woods. The intimacy did not cease for many years, and re-reading some of her letters in 1906 I realised more than ever my indebtedness to her. . . . It was to her I looked up in those days as the perfect lady.21

  Did he fancy Rebecca? We can’t be sure as at this time ‘matrimony [was] something not seriously entertained’.22 Certainly Carnegie was more impressed with wealth than a pretty face; decades later his friend Thomas Miller reminded him of ‘the awe you felt – or was it exultation? – when I took dinner with you at Scott’s and “Beck” Stewart was our hostess? She went out for some service, and you hastily took up a cream pitcher and said “Real silver, Tom!”’23 But with or without Rebecca, Carnegie was soon to have another chance encounter that was to spur his career ever onwards.

  SIX

  WAR CLOUDS AND A SILVER LINING

  Carnegie . . . was the most genial of despots, bending men to his will by an unfailing charm.

  Burton J. Hendrick, biographer, 1932

  Sitting in Auchnagar, the little bungalow that he built in Sutherland, Carnegie began to write his memoirs in 1914. His memory was sharp, but his tendency to romanticise parts of his life grew stronger. A good example of this was in his recollection of the events of 1858 and his encounter with Theodore T. Woodruff.

  According to Carnegie he was travelling one day in a Pennsylvania Railroad observation car, watching the scenery, when a man of rustic aspect came and sat beside him. The man carried ‘a small green bag’ and said that the brakeman had pointed out Carnegie as an employee of the railway company.1 The man produced from his bag a model of a new-style railway carriage with a section of a sleeping-car. ‘Its importance flashed upon me.’ Carnegie said that he would take the matter up with Thomas A. Scott with a view to the railway company developing the idea.

  Thus Carnegie gave the impression that Woodruff was an unknown inventor that he cultivated and so brought to the world the concept of the sleeping-car. Nothing could be further from the truth. Woodruff had begun his business life as a wagon maker with a flair for innovation and invention. He became master builder for the Terre Haute, Alton & St Louis Railroad and in 1856 secured patents for his sleeping-car. In time he established T.T. Woodruff & Co. (later called the Central Transport Co.), and himself pursued a deal with the Pennsylvania Railroad.

  Always keen to pursue new ideas for the Pennsylvania Railroad, J. Edgar Thomson had introduced various innovations from carriage heating to gas lighting, so he jumped at Woodruff’s idea and placed an order for four sleeping-cars. Woodruff needed finance to meet his swelling order book, and both Thomson and Scott became investors. Again luck fell Carnegie’s way. Another investor was needed, and Carnegie was given ‘an eighth interest in the venture’.2 His initial investment was $217.50, raised by means of a bank loan.3 The returns would be vast and Carnegie later said of the investment that ‘the first considerable sum I made was from this source’,4 and ‘Blessed be the man who invented sleep’.5

  Carnegie’s version of his first meeting with Woodruff appeared in his Triumphant Democracy in 1886. Woodruff was incandescent. The concept of sleeping berths on long-distance trains was not new, and was certainly not pioneered by Carnegie. Some lines ran freight cars with bunks built into their sides. The first sleeping-cars were cramped, cold, noisy, insanitary and unsafe, and no woman ever travelled in them. Woodruff’s invention was different; the day carriages could be quickly converted to night sleeping carriages which were both hygienic and safe, and Woodruff had successfully sold, and operated, such systems to other railway companies long before he had anything to do with the Pennsylvania Railroad, with whom the first contract was signed on 15 September 1858.

  Why did Carnegie lie? In a letter dated 12 June 1886 Woodruff said that it was ‘arrogance’ that ‘spurred [Carnegie] to make the statements’.6 Carnegie did not reply publicly to Woodruff, who, still angry, published his version in Philadelphia Sunday. Carnegie eventually wrote a disingenuous reply to Woodruff, in which he avoided all mention of Woodruff’s assertions. Within two years Carnegie’s initial investment of $217.50 was bringing him annual dividends of $5,000.7 In future he could afford to be cavalier with his accounts of his life.

  During the autumn of 1859 Thomas A. Scott announced that William B. Foster, the vice-president of the Pennsylvania Railroad, had died suddenly. It seemed likely that J. Edgar Thomson would ask Scott to take over Foster’s position, with Enoch Lewis replacing Scott. Where would that leave Carnegie? He was disturbed that he would no longer be within Scott’s immediate orbit. But would he consider the job of manager of the Pittsburgh (Western) Division of the railroad, in place of Enoch Lewis?

  Fully confident that, like his Dunfermline heroes William Wallace and Robert Bruce, he ‘could manage anything’, Carnegie accepted.8 Scott then asked: ‘What salary do you think you should have?’ Offended, Carnegie replied: ‘Salary, what do I care for salary? I do not want the salary. I want the position.’9 Despite his show of indifference to money, which was probably genuine enough if his Autobiography is to be believed, Carnegie was set a new salary of $1,500 a year rising to $1,800 for satisfactory progress. An agreement appointing him to the position of Superintendent of the Western Division was signed on 1 December 1859. What mattered most to Carnegie though, was that orders could now be sent out bearing his signature or initials rather than Scott’s.

  In accordance with his promotion the Carnegies soon returned to Pittsburgh, renting a house on Hancock Street (later 8th Street) near the Pennsylvania Railroad section. Immediately they missed the fresh air
of Altoona. Carnegie wrote:

  Any accurate description of Pittsburgh at that time would be set down as a piece of the grossest exaggeration. The smoke permeated and penetrated everything. If you placed your hand on the balustrade of the stair it came away black; if you washed your face and hands they were as dirty as ever in an hour. The soot gathered in the hair and irritated the skin, and for a time after our return from the mountain atmosphere of Altoona, life was more or less miserable.10

  Pittsburgh was now the sixteenth largest city in the USA, with glassworks and rolling mills creating extra jobs. It swarmed with immigrants seeking work in the streets leading down to the paddle-steamer wharves. The Carnegies felt stifled. Relief was at hand, though, in the person of Rebecca Stewart’s brother David, a Pennsylvania Railroad freight agent. Why didn’t the Carnegies come to his residential neighbourhood of Homewood, in the East Liberty Valley, some 15 miles north-east of the city? The Carnegies convened a family conference and duly purchased there ‘a modest tawny coloured, two-storey framed house, embowered in Norway spruce trees’.11

  The Carnegies launched themselves into a new society of well-heeled neighbours, and Benjamin and John Vandervort particularly became their firm friends. As Carnegie rubbed shoulders with such men as the octogenarian former US Minister to Russia the Hon. Judge William Wilkins, whose brother-in-law was George W. Dallas, Vice-President of the USA under President James K. Polk, he perfected his social graces and conversational skills on a new range of topics of the day; there were Vandervort musical evenings, skating parties, theatre visits and squirrel hunts, and games in Wilkins’s parlour. One subject that became taboo was politics. Judge Wilkins and his wife Matilda were ardent Democrats and racists. The fact that negroes were even admitted to the military academy at West Point dismayed Mrs Wilkins. On one occasion the abolitionist Carnegie could not hold his tongue and addressed her directly: ‘Mrs Wilkins, there is something even worse than that. I understand that some [negroes] have been admitted to Heaven.’ There was a pregnant silence, and with a fluttering of her fan Mrs Wilkins replied: ‘That is a different matter, Mr Carnegie.’12