by Peter Krass
Life was grand for a year, and then pennies were no longer playthings. Due to a business downturn in 1837, the growth of the damask trade quickly reversed, exacerbated by the fact that not only was there less work, but the number of looms in Dunfermline had reached a saturation point, almost doubling in the previous twenty years.27 Weavers employed in shops were paid off and let go; hundreds were without work, with the unemployment rate among weavers nearing 30 percent, making it necessary to start a relief fund. Compounding the distress, influenza and typhus fever struck Dunfermline, and there was also a poor harvest.28 All William could do was go to his closet to pray, which was his habit, but the damask trade would never be the same.
Now more desperate to wield political power, the working class created formidable political unions that encompassed all workers in all geographic locations. Two organizations came to the forefront in early 1838: the London Working Men’s Association (LWMA) and the Birmingham Political Union. The LWMA, with little fanfare, published its manifesto, The People’s Charter, which was aimed at suffrage reform, beginning with “a vote for everyman twenty-one years of age, of sound mind, and not undergoing punishment for crime.”29 It was the old story of fair representation for all.
In May, the Birmingham Political Union, with its power base in the industrial town of Birmingham, sent its most eloquent and electrifying speakers on tour—Dunfermline was on the itinerary—in support of the charter. The speakers also presented the union’s National Reform Petition, which, like the charter, demanded voter and parliamentary reforms, and called for everyone to sign. By early June, the petition was adopted in Dundee, Dunfermline, Edinburgh, Glasgow, and Perth, among other towns, and as the movement picked up momentum the supporters became known as Chartists. The Chartists were to be the unifying power that was supposed to bring about the downfall of the British government.
Both William Carnegie and his brother-in-law Thomas Morrison Jr. enthusiastically took up the Chartists’ mantle, which would impact Andra. Margaret’s eldest brother, Thomas, a member of the town council since 1833 and nicknamed “the Bailie,” was the carrier of the family’s radical torch and quickly took a leadership role in Dunfermline’s chapter of the London Working Men’s Association. Like his father, he was an impressive sight when haranguing the public, a forceful and sometimes supernatural-appearing specter. A tremendous walking stick—“as big as a post”—thumping down city roads always announced his arrival. A lean, upright man, Morrison added to his imposing figure by always donning a long frock coat and a lum hat, a chimney-shaped headpiece. Public speakers opposing Morrison feared the sight of his piercing eyes and his bushy beard in the crowd because he was renowned as “a determined and clever heckler,” showing contempt with a cuckoo singsong of “hear, hear, hear!” The Dunfermline Journal, a conservative newspaper, described his heckling as “most disgusting” and deplored how he could “laugh at the most sacred emotions of the human heart.”30 From Thomas, Andra would inherit a mocking, biting humor and a willingness to startle, stun, and otherwise disrupt his enemies.
When not humiliating the enemy or being chastised by the press, Thomas hosted other prominent British radicals and Chartists. Among them were those who espoused violence to achieve the charter; they were the physical force men who thirsted for armed revolution. Thomas, while a fiery character, did not advocate the use of physical force; instead he was a moral suasionist, believing that peaceful, logical discussion would effect change. Already a tenuous coalition as different tradesmen envisioned different goals, the Chartist movement would fracture over the point of violence versus pacifism. Decades later, Andra would also be faced with this basic choice between using physical force or peaceful persuasion in dealing with labor strikes like that at his Homestead steel mill in 1892; he would find himself and his lieutenants so divided on the issue that indecision would lead to tragedy. While strikes would be anathema to Andra, his uncle Thomas was not averse to calling for disruptive strikes, and helped establish a Cessation-from-Labour committee. Their purpose was “to go on strike and ‘not to resume the production of wealth until the People’s Charter becomes law.’”31 To not produce wealth was a prospect that did indeed intimidate the authorities, landowners, and sundry lords. Troops and cavalry were sent from Edinburgh to patrol Dunfermline and prevent seditious meetings, so the town’s defiant Chartists held a meeting in nearby Torryburn—with Tom Morrison and his club at the podium.32
Often at his brother-in-law’s side at many of the gatherings, Will developed into a forceful speaker, too, and little Andra, when attending the political rallies, would push through the thick human brush of legs and coats to see his father. Will also took up his pen for the cause, writing a bold letter to the editor of the Edinburgh Monthly Democrat, a newly founded Chartist newspaper, that was printed in the July 7, 1838, inaugural issue. He extolled Dunfermline’s Chartist movement, noted that 6,106 citizens had signed the Chartist petition, and concluded, “The work goes on gloriously here.”33 Despite Will’s optimism, the next spring the proposals in the Chartist petition were soundly rejected by the House of Commons, 235 votes to 46. Radical activity would thereafter become more desperate.
Andrew Carnegie was not yet three years old when the Chartist movement began in 1838, and he could hardly understand the social and economic dynamics behind it; however, the excitement it generated in his parents worried the boy. Childhood in the Carnegie home offered little enjoyment with Father at the loom ten to twelve hours a day, Mother laboring through chores, and the Carnegie-Morrison clan dedicating hours to planning the reform campaign. A voracious reader who cofounded a small library for weaver families, Will spent any other precious free minutes reading the papers and Bentley’s Miscellany’s monthly installments of the latest Charles Dickens novel, such as Oliver Twist or Nicholas Nickleby.
The one sanctuary Andra could escape to for attention and boyhood pleasures was his uncle George Lauder’s grocery store on High Street. By instinct, he gravitated toward this surrogate father, who, after his wife Seaton’s premature death, turned his attention to his son, George Jr., and Andra, hoping to forget his grief in their young enthusiasm. Andra spent many hours of the day with his uncle and his cousin George, and the boys, close in age, became like brothers. Unable to say each other’s names as toddlers, George called his cousin by a piece of his last name, Naig, and Andrew, using a piece of no one knows what, called him Dod; the names stuck for their entire lives. When there were no customers, Uncle Lauder, as the family called him, would pull up a couple of crates and, in a hushed tone, recount stories of Scotland’s history, including the boys’ favorite—the heroic exploits of William Wallace. Wallace emerged from obscurity to lead Scottish forces against the ruthless English King Edward I, whose army was defeated on September 11, 1297. Anointed guardian of Scotland, Wallace later resigned and was eventually captured. For his crimes he was hanged, decapitated, his head mounted on London Bridge, his internal organs burned, and his body cut into four parts to be displayed in Scotland as a gentle reminder to not question the king’s authority. No doubt, Uncle Lauder edited the story a bit to soften the blow. The message imparted was that a commoner had risen up to become the guardian of Scotland, comparable to being king, and so, too, could the boys elevate themselves to greatness. Wallace upset the natural order, the hierarchy of the social class, and for Andra, “everything heroic centered in him.”34
The exploits of King Robert the Bruce, who won Scotland’s independence on the heels of Wallace’s heroics, were also favorites of the boys: how his three brothers were captured and executed; how his wife was held prisoner for eight years; how he risked his wealth and estates for all-out war against the English; how he single-handedly slew three would-be ambushers; how he made and broke alliances to secure victory; and how he mingled with all his soldiers to win loyalty. These stories were dramatic lessons for Dod and Naig to be applied later in life, and to ensure the boys remembered their history, Uncle Lauder offered pennies as rewards for memoriz
ing facts. It worked. A neighbor recalled that Andra developed a spongelike memory; for one of the girls he played with he would commit to memory favorite songs and poetry, then stand on the kitchen chair and recite them back.35 His power of memorization and fine public performing would serve him well, and he later wrote that his uncle’s “influence over me cannot be overestimated.”36 At this early age, Andra also associated the monetary rewards with success, the only measurement he would know how to use as an adult.
Outside of Uncle Lauder’s shop, the ruins of the Meal Mill on Monastery Street became the boys’ castle for imaginary sieges and battles, the dam of an old barley mill made for a moat and drawbridge—until the stagnant water became dangerously polluted—and the hilly, cobbled streets lined with single-story cottages with red-tiled roofs were also the playground.37 The preferred games were marbles, or “plounkie,” and grounders. Athletic competition, such as high jumping and racing base, was popular, too, for the blue-collar boys who couldn’t afford more luxurious sporting events such as foxhunting or dressage or cricket. The absolute favorite, however, was cavalry fighting, in which Andra would perch on the shoulders of a stronger lad and try to knock off a similarly mounted antagonist. Blood and broken bones were not unknown, and the games instilled in the young men a will to win.38 Competition, violence, bloodshed, and even death, it seems, could not be ignored; they were everywhere in Andra’s life, from Scottish history to the coal mines ringing Dunfermline to the streets on which he walked.
There was one place, an oasislike paradise in Dunfermline, where Andra was banned from playing—the Pittencrieff estate and its parklike grounds. Owned by the Hunt family, Pittencrieff was the largest estate in town, the property encompassing the historically important ruins of the mythical monastery and palace, along with more than sixty acres of grand lawns, high hills, deep woods, and beautiful views of the firth. Although the Hunts were an inhospitable bunch, protecting their estate with formidable stone walls and iron gates, every May, in an annual display of generosity, the family would open the grounds to the public, except to those descended from Thomas Morrison Sr. The radical had publicly fought with James Hunt over greater access to Dunfermline’s heritage—the ruins—and a spiteful Hunt barred all Morrisons and descendants from ever stepping on the property. With Uncle Thomas still riling the Hunt family, the feud continued a generation later, and Andra could only daydream of magic among the ruins. One day he would exact revenge and procure the estate.
As Andra grew older and prepared to become a fourth-generation weaver, work became part of his daily routine. For hours, he’d watch his father weave, fascinated by the rhythmic movement and clatter of the handheld driver stick and the batten; and when needed, he fetched supplies, such as spools of yarn and buckets of water. Water was a scarce commodity in Dunfermline, so every morning queues formed at public wells to pump the day’s first supply, a chore Andra enjoyed only because he could antagonize the old ladies. “The supply was scanty and irregular,” he recalled. “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.”39 Never intimidated by the ladies’ clucking reproaches, brash Andra, with flaxen hair and sturdy, stumpy legs, always ignored their cans and scurried to the front of the queue.
Occasional emergencies at Uncle Lauder’s shop required Andra’s help. Once, when Dod and Naig were about nine or ten years of age, Lauder bought one hundred pints of exceptionally ripe gooseberries that had to be peddled immediately. “Well Naig,” Uncle Lauder said, “will you and Dod go to Crossgates with John Vock and his Cuddy Cart and sell these grosets for me?” It was a big job, but Andra was already displaying an aptitude for selling and performed admirably, according to Uncle Lauder, who in a letter to Andra, reflected, “This was a lesson in self reliance—and nobly did the lads acquit themselves.”40
Self-reliance and independence: These were traits bred in young Andra’s bone and because he was small in physical stature, reaching only five feet three inches in adulthood (five feet seven inches was the American adult male average), he had no choice but to rely on a quick wit to solve problems. As a boy, he showed this acumen when he started keeping rabbits. His father was good enough to build a rabbit hutch, but when it came to feeding the rabbits (who multiplied unmercifully, as rabbits are apt to do) Andra was on his own. To manage the task, the boy gathered his chums and made his first business deal: if they gathered dandelions and clover to feed the frisky rabbits, he would name a rabbit after each of them. Playing upon vanity, the manipulative Andra learned at a young age, was a clever means to motivate others and to profit. It was a technique he used time and again to secure his desires.
As for a formal education, which was then voluntary, doting Will and Margaret promised their only child they would not ship him off to school until he was quite ready. By the time he reached age seven and was still showing no inclination to attend school, Will and Margaret were regretting their promise. Finally, they approached Robert Martin, head of the nearby Rolland School, and asked him to take Andra on a little outing to discuss the merits of schooling. To his parents’ relief, the eight-year-old boy took to Mr. Martin and was enrolled in the school at a cost of a few pennies a week. Between 150 and 180 students attended the Rolland School, the entire flock in a single room. The master taught the lessons to the older students, who in turn helped the younger with studies that included spelling, memorizing, doing sums in arithmetic, and writing in copybooks. The students would form a semicircle around the teacher to “say their lessons,” a duty the demonstrative Andra excelled at—and a good thing, too, because “Snuffy” Martin, as the headmaster was secretly called, was a taskmaster. If one of his cretinous charges misbehaved, he threw a leather strap at the perpetrator. The child then brought the strap to Snuffy and took a smart whack on the open palm.
Far from being a hooligan, Andra was a boy who tried too hard in the eyes of his peers and was nicknamed “Martin’s Pet,” a name snarled at him in passing. Although he despised the moniker, Andra couldn’t help but be a diligent student. In his teacher, as he had in Uncle Lauder and as he would throughout his life, he astutely recognized another worthy mentor. Andra had the canny ability to latch on to both men and women from whom he could absorb wisdom and information and who could further his career. From Mr. Martin’s perspective, he claimed that Andrew Carnegie was “one of the smartest lads who had ever passed through his school.”41 Besides the nickname Martin’s Pet, the only other souring experience at school was having to recite a daily dose of two double verses of the Psalms. Due to his father and mother’s rejection of traditional church, religion was not Andra’s forte, immediately demonstrated on the first day of school when he was asked to recite a proverb. Proudly, he responded, “Take care of your pence, the pound will take care of themselves.”42 That particular proverb’s source was Andra’s mother, not the Good Book, and his classmates had a hearty laugh at his expense. It was only fitting that Margaret Carnegie held more power over her son than any god: she was the single greatest motivational force behind his success.
Notes
1. James B. Mackie, Andrew Carnegie: His Dunfermline Ties and Benefactions (Dunfermline, Scot.: Dunfermline Journal Printing Works, 1916), p. 4. Genealogical information is from Mackie and the Carnegie Birthplace Museum, Dunfermline, Scotland.
2. Andrew Carnegie, The Autobiography of Andrew Carnegie (Boston: Northeastern University Press, 1986), p. 3.
3. Mackie, p. 4.
4. Burton J. Hendrick, The Life of Andrew Carnegie, vol. 1 (Garden City, N.Y.: Doubleday, Doran, 1932), pp. 4–5. Hendrick was selected by Louise Carnegie to be her
husband’s official biographer.
5. Hendrick, Carnegie, vol. 1, p. 3; Mackie, p. 7; Carnegie, Autobiography, p. 2.
6. Mackie, p. 7.
7. Joseph Frazier Wall, Andrew Carnegie (New York: Oxford University Press, 1970), p. 33.
8. Ebenezer Henderson, Annals of Dunfermline (Glasgow: n.p., 1879), p. 107. Henderson was the town’s historian.
9. Norman Murray, The Scottish Hand Loom Weavers, 1790–1850: A Social History (Edinburgh: John Donald Publishers, 1978), p. 13.
10. Wall, Carnegie, p. 21; Carnegie, Autobiography, p. 6. Dunfermline historians dispute whether the Morrisons moved from Edinburgh. There is also no proof that Thomas Morrison Sr. squandered the family’s business. Some historians think he may have lost the business during a severe economic downturn during the early Napoleonic Wars.
11. Thomas Morrison, “Rights of Land,” unpublished manuscript, Carnegie Papers, Carnegie Museum, Dunfermline, Scot.
12. Wall, Carnegie, p. 22.
13. The first issue appeared in January 1833 and sold for two pence a copy.
14. Alexander Wilson, The Chartist Movement in Scotland (Manchester, Engl.: University Press, 1970), pp. 1–4.
15. Ibid., p. 13.
16. R. H. Campbell, Scotland Since 1707: The Rise of an Industrial Society (New York: Barnes & Noble, 1965), pp. 167–168.
17. Ibid., p. 184.
18. Eric Simpson, The Auld Grey Toun: Dunfermline in the Time of Andrew Carnegie (Dunfermline, Scot.: Carnegie Dunfermline Trust, 1987), p.17.
