Carnegie
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On 4 January Carnegie left depression-torn New York and travelled to Egypt, leaving his managers under media siege at Pittsburgh. Then the Carnegies went to Buckhurst Park for three months; when the weather warmed up they were back at Cluny Castle. Interestingly, while he was at Buckland Park Carnegie contacted Andrew D. White, whom he had first met all those years back at Madame Botta’s soirées. White was now the US ambassador to the Imperial Court of Emperor Nicholas II of Russia, who had just succeeded his father Alexander III. What were the possibilities of selling armour plating to Russia? Carnegie’s pacifist principles were being subsumed once more for profit.
More trouble was brewing for Carnegie. After the armour scandal the Carnegie managers were jumpy and steadily losing confidence in one another. Frick was becoming disenchanted with Schwab, whom he considered guilty of mismanaging the armour affair. Carnegie ignored Frick’s opinions, but on 1 January 1895 he received Frick’s resignation underlining his wish to retire. There was more to it than this; Frick was tired of Carnegie’s management style and his undermining of the chain of command by interfering when he felt like it in company policy. Trust had broken down. Frick was not happy that Carnegie was also meddling in the negotiations for the Russian armour contract; in the event it went to Bethlehem Steel, to Carnegie’s annoyance.
Carnegie mulled over Frick’s resignation, offering the incentive of him staying on to enable Carnegie to sell out to him and the other partners in due course to make them sole owners of the company. But Frick was not to be bought with blandishments. Partner Harry Phipps was also unwilling to fill Frick’s place so Carnegie thought of offering the presidency of the company to Vice-President John Leishman. Alas, Leishman had a reputation for speculative share-dealing that made him unsound. So Carnegie went back to building bridges with Frick. For a while, though, he had been publicly implying that Frick was a sick man, and had even put this in a letter to Phipps exaggerating the extent of the supposed illness. Phipps showed the letter to Frick, who was furious and sent off a blistering reply to Carnegie:
I desired to quietly withdraw, doing as little harm as possible to the interests of others, because I had become tired of your business methods, your absurd newspaper interviews and personal remarks and unwarranted interference in matters you knew nothing about.
It has been your custom for years when any of your partners disagreed with you to say they were unwell, needed a change, etc.
I warn you to carry this no farther with me but come forward like a man and purchase my interest, and let us part before it becomes impossible to continue as friends.6
In his usual persuasive manner Carnegie mollified Frick in some part. Phipps, too, had made it plain that unless Carnegie made up with Frick he would sell his shares in the company and withdraw. The company continued as before, with Frick now as chairman, but the tensions remained obvious. Meanwhile Carnegie continued with his philanthropic plans. Schwab was instructed to prepare plans for a library at Homestead, which detractors interpreted as guilt money over the past difficulties. Carnegie also continued with gifts to friends and family.
During 1895–6 Carnegie was once again, under his own auspices, plunged into politics. For some five decades the United Kingdom and Venezuela had been squabbling over the boundary between the colony of British Guiana (since 1970 the Cooperative Republic of Guyana) and Venezuela. From time to time Venezuela had appealed to the US to mediate over the British ‘aggression’ but diplomatic negotiations between successive US Secretaries of State and Her Majesty’s government in London had proved fruitless. When President Grover Cleveland entered his second administration he took up the Venezuela case with renewed vigour. When W.E. Gladstone had been British Prime Minister friendly cooperation had been on the cards, but on 25 June 1895 the Tory Lord Salisbury was returned as Prime Minister and was also acting as his own Foreign Secretary. The Venezuela dispute broke out again. No Anglophile, Cleveland accused the British of using a fluid boundary to acquire new territory – with mineral and strategic advantages; this was in violation of the US foreign policy statement of 2 December 1823 by President James Monroe (the ‘Monroe Doctrine’), which stated simply that any European power attempting to control any nation in the western hemisphere would be viewed as engaging in a hostile act against the United States.
The American newspapers talked of war. Any bad feeling between the US and the UK upset Carnegie, who still dreamed of a quadruple alliance of eternal peace and prosperity between Canada, Britain, the United States and the British Commonwealth. More than that, since he had been a delegate at the Pan-American Conference in 1889 Carnegie considered South American affairs to be his special project. When Cleveland announced his firm line against Britain, the stock exchanges in both countries panicked. Although Carnegie thought that Cleveland and his Secretary of State Richard Olney had provoked Britain, he broadly supported the President’s plan to fix a firm boundary. Carnegie endeavoured to sway British opinion towards this plan by jockeying his old friends in England.
He wrote to Salisbury’s Lord President of the Council, Spencer Compton Cavendish, 8th Duke of Devonshire, asking him to use ‘your great influence in the councils of your country on behalf of a conciliatory policy’.7 To anyone who would listen Carnegie expounded his thoughts, which he brought to a wider world in the February 1896 issue of North American Review. The theme of the pacifist piece was the hope that the whole matter could be settled by arbitration, as he feared that non-cooperation would inevitably lead to war.
Salisbury was listening, not to Carnegie but to Kaiser Wilhelm II’s slowly beating war drums, and he put forward the idea of some form of arbitration. He insisted ‘though’ that ‘disputed territory that had been settled by Englishmen “would be retained”’.8 Carnegie considered this ‘inadequate’ and wrote to W.E. Gladstone from Cluny Castle on 25 July 1896. The ailing, almost blind Gladstone received Louise and Andrew Carnegie at Hawarden Castle to discuss the matter, remarking that the situation needed ‘younger men’ to deal with it. In the event, public opinion on both sides of the Atlantic led to the needed arbitration. Although unable to attend the International Tribunal of Arbitration, Carnegie endeavoured to play a role by helping fund it to the tune of $1,000.9 Ironically, as he was doing his best to promote peace between his beloved countries, his company was busy exploiting armaments contracts to which he gave his full backing.
During the summer of 1896 the Carnegies set off on a grand tour of Europe, and this time the party included Louise’s sister Estelle (‘Stella’) Whitfield who was increasingly acting as extra comforter. For some time Louise had been unwell, Carnegie taking her to Palm Beach spa for her health. This time the tour took in Italy and Austria. According to family tradition the Homestead conflict had affected Louise’s health, and the continuing agitation of the armour scandal and the Venezuelan dispute all further debilitated her. There was added duress during 1895–6 when Carnegie had several disputes with the Pennsylvania Railroad over freight charges (after much haggling and threats he won sizeable rebates) and engaged in a new jockeying with John D. Rockefeller.
The depression years had been kind to Rockefeller. He was the foremost leader in oil refinery and was now intent on securing domination of the iron ore industry. This dismayed Carnegie. Going against the advice of Frick and his other colleagues, he entered the fray. He not only wanted a piece of the action, he also wanted to thwart Rockefeller’s intended dominance. To counter Rockefeller’s purchases of ore interests like those in the Mesabi mountains of north Minnesota, Carnegie sought ore deposits in West Virginia. Nothing in Carnegie’s business transactions was now simple and he was further dismayed to hear that Rockefeller wished to enter the steel industry to challenge Carnegie Steel. Realising that he could not compete with Rockefeller in the race for ore, and determined to keep Rockefeller out of steel, Carnegie agreed to buy the ore for Carnegie Steel from Rockefeller. It gave Rockefeller another interest to cool the steel idea.
All these matters produced a great
deal of worry in the Carnegie household. Monitoring her fragile health, Louise’s doctor believed that she needed a renewed family focus. He felt that Louise would benefit both physically and mentally if she had a child. Carnegie was not sure. He was now 61 and he feared that he might lose Louise in childbirth. Louise herself had no such fears. Her health had improved during their European trip and while in Austria she conceived. So 1897 was to be a year like no other for Carnegie. Carnegie Steel and all his subsidiary companies were prospering, although his colleagues were bearing the brunt of the work, and Carnegie was free to look forward to fatherhood with eagerness.
SEVENTEEN
A DAUGHTER AND A DWELLING
Mr Carnegie, I want to congratulate you on being the richest man in the world.
J.P. Morgan to Andrew Carnegie, February 1901
On 30 March 1897 at 51st Street, New York, 40-year-old Louise Carnegie gave birth to a girl; the infant was named Margaret after her deceased paternal grandmother. Back in Scotland, Cluny Macpherson gave orders that the birth of the daughter of his old friends the Carnegies should be celebrated in true ‘Badenoch style’ – Badenoch being the name of the wild district of the Scottish Highlands in which Cluny Castle was situated. Carnegie was delighted: ‘There were nine bonfires upon as many Cluny hills, to celebrate the advent of little Saint Margaret, and such rejoicing! Such evidences of attachment tell!’1 Even if conventional fashion had allowed it, Carnegie was not at the birth of his child; he was languishing with pleurisy at his sister-in-law Lucy Coleman Carnegie’s house at Greenwich, Connecticut, in the care of Louise’s sister Stella.
There was never a more devoted father; he was captivated by every syllable uttered by his ‘wonderful wean’ (i.e. child).2 He spent hours with her, following every aspect of her development with delight. When she got older he entertained her with stories ‘of ghosts, burglars and other engaging characters, most of which he invented himself’.3 He interlarded his storytelling with titbits from Scots history and poesy – just as Uncle George Lauder had for him in his Dunfermline childhood. Carnegie’s love of games was enhanced with a new playmate to share them with, and whenever her father was away Margaret received letters and notes from him full of fun and information, read to her before she could read herself by devoted Nannie Lockerbie.
Margaret’s every cough and snuffle greatly agitated Carnegie. Her most serious illness occurred when she was 8; a sprained ankle did not right itself naturally and the Edinburgh physician Carnegie called in suspected a bone infection. Professor (later Sir) Harold Jalland Stiles, consultant at the Royal Edinburgh Hospital for Sick Children, suspected a bone deterioration, and Margaret was in a plaster cast and then a splint for some three years. At length a condition associated with articular gout was diagnosed and a steady recovery was made. Carnegie wrote to his friend John Morley on 14 January 1906 that ‘a heavy weight is lifted from our hearts’.4 Margaret lived in a household that made her almost a miniature adult from babyhood, and the attention her father had once lavished on her gradually lessened as he became more deeply involved with his philanthropy.
The birth of baby Margaret coincided with another need for change. In 1897 laird Cluny Macpherson, now a 61-year-old bachelor, married Mary Stacey and wished to live in his ancestral home. Over the years the Carnegies had endeavoured to buy Cluny Castle from Macpherson but he would never sell. The Carnegies as tenants must now seek a new refuge. But where? Louise Carnegie was adamant that after the arrival of their child they should cease to be tenants ‘obliged to go in and out at a certain date. It should be our home . . . I make only one condition. It must be in the Highlands of Scotland.’5
The summer of 1897 was the last the Carnegies spent at Cluny. In Britain and the territories abroad it was a great royal year. At Windsor Castle on 20 June 1897 Queen Victoria attended a ‘touching service’ at St George’s Chapel, and the whole nation embarked on a series of commemorations and celebrations to mark the day sixty years before – 20 June 1837 – when 19-year-old Princess Victoria, sixth monarch of the House of Hanover, succeeded as queen of what was to be the largest family of nations the world has ever known; she was crowned at Westminster Abbey on 28 June 1839. On 22 June 1897 the Carnegies joined the crowds along the 6-mile route for the royal procession from Buckingham Palace to St Paul’s Cathedral to pay their respects. Carnegie, who as a youngster would have executed every monarch in sight, shared his feelings about the occasion with an American audience:
The principal figure of the Jubilee, Queen Victoria herself, and the position she has gained and will hold to the end of her days, is worthy of study. It is not possible for any American, however well informed of British affairs, to quite understand the feelings with which this human being is now regarded. If he can imagine Old Glory [the American flag] and Old Ironsides, Washington and Lincoln, Bunker Hill and ‘My Country, ’Tis of Thee’ rolled into one force, and personified in a woman, he may form some conception of the feelings of the average Briton for ‘The Queen’, for she in her own person symbolizes today the might and majesty of the land, and its long, varied and glorious history from the beginning. ‘The Queen’ means everything that touches and thrills the patriotic chord. That both as a woman and a sovereign, she has deserved the unique tribute paid her goes without saying; the wildest radical, or even republican, will concur in this. Sixty years of unremitting work – she still signs every state paper herself, including lieutenants’ commissions in the militia – prudence, patience and rare judgement have made of this good, able, energetic, managing, and very wise woman a saint, whom her subjects are as little capable and as little disposed to estimate critically as the American schoolboy can imagine or is disposed to imagine, Washington as possessed of human frailties. Washington, [William] Tell, Wallace, Bruce, Lincoln, Queen Victoria or [Queen] Margaret are the stuff of which heroes or saints are made, and well it is for the race that the capacity for hero worship and for saint worship remains with both Briton and American wholly unimpaired.
When a nation ceases to create ideals its glorious days are past. Fortunately for the world, both the republic and the monarchy have the future before them.6
Then in this Diamond Jubilee year Carnegie set out to secure a palace for his own financial kingdom. To help in his search for a permanent home Carnegie recruited the help of Hew Morrison, the librarian at Carnegie’s new library foundation at Edinburgh. Morrison had a special interest in Scotland’s ancient castles and mansions, and to assist him Carnegie wrote a memo of essential requirements for his Scottish home: ‘It must have plenty of land, trout and salmon fishing, woods and hills, lochs and streams, a location bordering the sea, and, even more important, a beautiful waterfall.’7
At the top of Morrison’s research file of potential properties were a few available within the huge estates of Cromartie Sutherland-Leveson-Gower, 4th Duke of Sutherland. Carnegie had already encountered the Sutherlands: Duchess Millicent had extracted money from him for her project to relieve the widows and orphans of the mining disaster at Audley Colliery (1895).8 Also on Morrison’s list was a property called Skibo abutting the Dornoch Firth. Morrison had done his research well and included maps and a deed with his notes. Carnegie was unimpressed; Skibo was run-down, smaller than he was looking for and had no waterfall.
Carnegie organised a two-week coaching trip to look at properties. From Inverness they travelled up the Moray Firth and east across Ross and Cromarty, to enter Sutherland at the village of Bonar Bridge where Thomas Telford’s bridge of 1812 (rebuilt after the flood of 1892) spans the channel between Dornoch Firth and the Kyle of Sutherland. From Bonar Bridge the main road runs east through the fine woods of the north shore of the Firth and would pass the estate of Skibo. Why not give it a passing glance, suggested Morrison. Carnegie reluctantly agreed but decided to go alone with Morrison as a separate jaunt. Their hired wagonette would take them the 8 miles or so to Skibo. As they travelled Morrison pointed out various features and then they entered the long tree-lined drive to the white
Scottish baronial-style sandstone castle. Dismounting, they walked around the weed-grown terraces and took in the initial ambience of the place, its gables and turrets, woodlands and magnificent views of the 22,000-acre estate. As Carnegie soaked up the hills, pastures and angling potential – with a mooring for his yacht Sea-breeze – Morrison reviewed a little of the castle’s history.