by Peter Krass
26. Carnegie, Autobiography, p. 56. Carnegie states that it was 1852 in his autobiography, but a June 22, 1851, letter to Dod shows that it was 1851.
27. AC to George Lauder Jr., June 22, 1851, ACLOC, vol. 1.
28. Frances C. Cooper to Burton J. Hendrick, July 5, 1927, ACLOC, vol. 239.
29. Wall states that Aunt Annie moved with the Hogans; however, in his March 14, 1853, letter to Uncle Lauder, Carnegie writes that his mother was helping Aunt Annie at her store, so she couldn’t have moved then.
30. AC to George Lauder Sr., May 30, 1852, ACLOC, vol. 1.
31. Carnegie, Autobiography, p. 60.
CHAPTER 4
The Scotch Devil
Visitors to the Atlantic and Ohio Telegraph Company couldn’t help but notice the buoyant, hustling, white-haired Andy. They included Thomas A. Scott, general superintendent of the Pennsylvania Railroad and a regular customer, who took a paternalistic liking to the young man. Those at the telegraph office couldn’t help but notice Scott. All the railroad officials were pandered to, but Scott’s classic good looks—a strong chin, high cheekbones— and personable demeanor made him particularly attractive. Now, with the railroad having strung its own telegraph lines, he decided to hire a personal clerk who would double as his telegraph operator. Andy was his first choice. The lad hesitated in accepting, however.
His mentor, Mr. Glass, was now running the entire office, and Andy rightly envisioned himself in Mr. Glass’s position someday. Life was comfortable, and Glass did offer to increase Andy’s salary to $400 a year if he elected to stay, so why make a change? But Glass knew the railroad would offer a chance at real advancement, so even though he hated to lose an experienced operator, he encouraged the change, explaining that the most Andy could make at the telegraph office was $700 or $800 a year, while the railroad held unlimited prospects. Andy’s friend and fellow telegrapher, the reliable Tom David, recalled how difficult the decision was in a letter to his friend: “It took some persuasion on the part of John P. Glass to convince you that it offered better opportunities. I saw you and Mr. Glass having an earnest talk and to my question, ‘What is wrong with Andy?’ he intimated that you did not like to make a change.”1 Only after consulting with his mother, which Andy did for every important decision, and only after she concurred with Mr. Glass, did he agree to join Scott.2
Andy revised the story later in life, claiming he was eager to join the Pennsylvania Railroad, which he promulgated in interviews and in his autobiography:
One day I was surprised by one of his [Scott’s] 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.”3
The purpose of the revision was to place himself in a more proactive role when it came to what was a significant turning point in his career. Rather than the scenario of Scott plucking him from the office and Andy reluctantly accepting the change, he wanted it to be him who aggressively pursued the opportunity. While seemingly a trivial revision, it was not, because it was part of a more duplicitous pattern of revisionism that emerged once Andy began to attain prestige. He felt it necessary to refine, aggrandize, and sanitize much of his life, some of it to prove painful to others.
When Andy joined the Pennsylvania Railroad on February 1, 1853, at $35 a month, he came under the tutelage of a strong-willed man in Scott, a debonair man who considered himself a dashing speculator willing to exploit most anyone to make a dollar. Andy’s new workplace was an office at the Outer Depot, a twenty-acre property on the outskirts of Pittsburgh. That first morning, as he approached the depot, he encountered a breathtaking sight: an intense hive of activity within a maze of railroad track and colossal structures. There was a vast locomotive and car-repair shop, 240 feet by 220 feet; blacksmith’s, tinner’s, painter’s, carpenter’s, and trimming shops; storehouses and offices; a freight house, 300 feet by 70 feet; iron and lumber yards; and one of America’s largest circular engine houses, 900 feet in circumference and containing stalls for forty-four locomotive engines and tenders.4 Since the locomotives burned wood, tremendous rows of cordwood were stored on the grounds—not until the 1860s did coal become the dominant fuel. The shrieking steam whistles, clanging bells, and hammering of iron, the heavy smoke and flying cinders, steam fouled with iron, and the deep driving chug of the locomotives all jarred Andy’s senses.
Even more so than the equipment and the brick structures, he was impressed by the men:
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 good and evil for the first time. . . . 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,” 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.5
Andy’s righteous indignation concerning the coarse men was the same indignation his mother had displayed when Uncle Thomas suggested Andy work at the waterfront. Margaret and her son placed themselves in a higher class than British society would ever have given them, and, although the family had preached the charter, they remained imbued with a class consciousness that caused them to snub the crude and feckless.
Just as the canal had been on the rough-and-tumble frontier of American commerce, the railroad was now, and it attracted the same vulgar characters who had migrated to the canals twenty-five years earlier. The laborers, stinking of sweat and smoke, clomping about in heavy boots and ratty jackets, were mostly Irishmen who took on the backbreaking work of building the lines. Trapped in their daily drudgery, they were oblivious to the impact of the railroads, which were making for a transient United States. People were leaving their hometowns never to return, were migrating from the countryside to the cities, from city to city, searching for opportunity; pleasure seekers were able to expand their horizons, and workers were able to commute much longer distances; new industries were realized, and commerce was maximized. The railroad perpetuated the exchange of ideas and cultures. It also brought conflict. Many people feared the railroad, the way it created and destroyed towns, depending on where the main and feeder lines were built. Many felt railroad companies took advantage of the public and the local governments, from demanding land to charging discriminatory rates. Most condemning, the railroad, for all its promise to unite the country economically and socially, did not prevent the Civil War.
Any romance the railroad offered was quickly dispelled at Andy’s new job because most of his tasks—and Mr. Scott’s, for that matter—were mundane, such as routing trains, clearing tracks, and policing the behavior of employees. Regulations were strict. Twice a week old material and brush had to be cleared away and stacked neatly in designated areas; station houses and yards had to be kept clean. Conductors were drilled to be most considerate of travelers and to quickly eject any passengers using profanity or acting disorderly or drunk. The relatively frequent crashes did provide excitement. Stray animals were often the culprit; the trains could handle a sheep, but a cow or a horse moseying along the tracks was another matter.
A month after being hired, Andy penned a letter to Uncle Lauder, explaining his new job with Mr. Scott, of whom Andy wrote, “I have met with very few men that I like so well in this country—and I am sure we will agree very well.” The job was equally agre
eable; instead of working until eleven o’clock at night, he was finished at six, which left him “not so much confined.”6 The free evenings were not for pleasure, however, not as far as Andrew Carnegie was concerned; they were for self-improvement.
Andy was a voracious reader, like his father, and the one place in Allegheny City he could satisfy his appetite was Colonel Anderson’s library on Federal Street. James Anderson, who fought in the War of 1812 and made his fortune as an iron manufacturer, donated fifteen hundred volumes of religious, scientific, and historical books to the town. His purpose was to provide a building of knowledge, free of charge, for apprentices for whom school was not an option. Voluntary subscriptions of $2 a year were requested from other patrons to support the library. Andy’s friend Thomas Miller, who lived near the colonel, introduced Andy to the local hero; and before long, the Original Six were frequenting the library. As working boys, they were permitted entry at no charge. “Colonel Anderson opened to me the intellectual wealth of the world,” Carnegie reflected. “I became fond of reading. I reveled week after week in the books. My toil was light, for I got up at six o’clock in the morning, contented to work until six in the evening if there was then a book for me to read.”7 He always sought environments conducive to his evolutionary progress, whether it was Uncle Lauder’s shop, Colonel Anderson’s library, or debates with the Original Six. He would never forget what that small library meant to him, how the books fed his imagination and knowledge. As a result, library giving would become the mantelpiece for his philanthropy.
In 1853, Anderson’s library, called The Mechanics’ and Apprentices’ Library, was moved to 611 West Diamond Street, and the new administrators began to charge all patrons $2 except true apprentices, defined strictly as those bound to another. Andy was aghast that he was now forced to pay; after all, he reasoned, he was a working boy (although seventeen years old) with no chance to continue schooling. His radical spirit came to the fore. He argued with the librarian, but it proved futile, so he took his dispute to an open forum— the newspapers. On May 13, 1853, a letter to the editor of the Pittsburgh Dispatch appeared:
MR. EDITOR:
Believing that you take a deep interest in whatever tends to elevate, instruct and improve the youth of this country, I am induced to call your attention to the following. You will remember that some time ago Mr. Anderson (a gentleman of this city) bequested a large sum of money to establish and support a Library for working boys and apprentices residing here. It has been in successful operation for over a year, scattering precious seeds among us, and although fallen “by the wayside and in stony places,” not a few have found good ground. Every working boy has been freely admitted only requiring his parents or guardian to become surety. But its means of doing good have recently been greatly circumscribed by new directors who refuse to allow any boy who is not learning a trade and bound for a stated time to become a member. I rather think that the new directors have misunderstood the generous donor’s intentions. It can hardly be thought that he meant to exclude boys employed in stores merely because they are not bound.
A Working Boy though not bound.
In the spirit of his father and Uncle Thomas Morrison, Andy opened his letter with a moral-suasionist argument: the library should remain free to working boys because it improves youth. He then left the moral ground and attempted to refute the logic of the new directors’ decision through sheer speculation serving his own agenda. The tone became presumptuous and combative.
Oblivious to the radical forces behind Andy’s personality, an anonymous librarian responded with a letter on May 16, in which he corrected Andy’s facts about the exact nature of Anderson’s gift, but he didn’t bother justifying the changes, except to allude to reasons. The letter was a slap on the hand— petty, as far as Andy was concerned. The very next day he retorted, “The question is, was the donation intended for use of apprentices only in strict meaning of the word, viz. persons learning a trade and bound, or whether it was designed for working boys whether bound or not? If the former be correct then the managers have certainly misunderstood the generous donor’s intentions.”8 The trivial mistakes pointed out by the librarian were excusable to Andy, especially since they were his own. There was no moral argument now; only the main thrust of his point mattered—namely, that he should be admitted for free. Others clamored to support Andy’s cause, so the anonymous librarian called for a summit, at which the matter was settled to Andy’s satisfaction. The Original Six anointed him their undisputed king for restoring their privileges.
Andy had clung instinctively to these boyhood friends—the Original Six, as well as his telegraph messenger comrades—even though his mother had advised otherwise. He needed those friends. He needed to compete against them in work and play and to measure himself against them in salary and social standing. His friends gave him value. At Andy’s urging, two friends from the telegraph office, David McCargo and Robert Pitcairn, joined the Pennsylvania Railroad. The Original Six gang would continue to remain tight, as well, keeping up with their Sunday debates, joining the Webster Literary Society, which met weekly to discuss classic literature, and forming a club that subscribed to Horace Greeley’s New York Weekly Tribune.
Now very cognizant of the power of the pen in a public forum, Andy was briefly inspired to become a news reporter and an editor like Horace Greeley, his latest hero. But instead, using the resources made available to him at Colonel Anderson’s library, Andy now brought his pen to bear upon his cousin Dod, who had challenged him to debate the political systems of the United States and the United Kingdom, respectively. “It will no doubt be beneficial to both of us to examine into the systems of Government by which we are ruled and it will prompt us to read and reflect on what perhaps we would never have done without the stimulant,” he wrote Uncle Lauder. “I have therefore accepted Dod’s challenge, and am now reading the Early History of our Republic and I find that the obstacles which our revolutionary fathers had to surmount and the dangers they had to encounter were far greater than I had imagined and worthy to take a place among the deeds of Scotland’s heroes.”9 His loyalties were shifting.
In an early salvo, Naig sent Dod a copy of the U.S. Constitution along with a condescending and ridiculing letter in which he demanded to see the (nonexistent) British Constitution.10 George Bancroft’s History of the United States, which Andy was reading, came in most handy for the debate; even in Bancroft’s introduction he discovered an arsenal of ideological weapons to use and expand upon. Bancroft touted the Constitution’s “capacity for improvement; adopting whatever changes time and the public will may require, and safe from decay, so long as that will retains its energy.”11 Echoing the historian, Andy wrote Dod, “Our Con. was made by the People and can be altered amended or done away with by them whenever they see fit.” He also directly borrowed from Bancroft in discussing America’s policies for managing the treasury and the armed forces.12 Andy was absorbing Bancroft’s words and ideas, as well as those of other prominent writers and thinkers such as Greeley, taking bits and pieces and making them his own as he reinvented himself in his adopted country. The letters to Dod helped him build a new sense of identity, of belonging to America.
Greeley, in particular, would have a lasting impact on Andy’s evolving personality and his philosophy for both life and business. Picturing America as a harmonious whole, Greeley promoted a grand economic vision in which the country tapped its tremendous natural resources to become self-sufficient. He believed the federal government should encourage and protect capitalism through high tariffs and other measures. Andy adopted both the vision and the position on tariffs. Not all of Greeley’s ideas meshed with Andy’s, however, as the proletarian newspaperman supported the laborer and was a voice for the poor. Too much was expected of the poverty-stricken and uneducated, Greeley argued, and circumstances in the new industrial order were such that the poor could not be expected to help themselves. Andy was diametrically opposed on this point. In a country that had the char
ter, Andy devoutly believed, every man had an equal chance to make something of himself. He was becoming a Republican capitalist, not a radical Chartist. As these two forces—capitalism and radicalism—continued to pull him in opposite directions, he developed a fragmented personality that would manifest itself in hypocritical behavior.
In his ebullient enthusiasm, Andy was blinded by the dazzling idealism imbedded in a democracy and worshiped his adopted country like it was a living, breathing hero. In an August 18, 1853, letter to Dod, the budding Republican displayed all the glory of the Republic, pronouncing that “our government is founded upon justice and our creed is that the will of the People is the source and their happiness the end of all legitimate Government.” Greeley’s voice was strong in this letter. Just three months prior, the newspaperman had written an editorial that included this passage: “In a Monarchy, the Government rules and the People obey—the rulers and the ruled being distinct and often antagonist; but in a Republic, based on Popular Education and Universal Suffrage, rulers and ruled are essentially the same.”13
In his letter, Andy proceeded to introduce his evidence as to why the U.S. political system is superior to Britain’s in every aspect, from the limited armed forces to the political equality: “An Irishman becomes a useful and patriotic citizen with us; he feels that he is on an equality with his neighbors, with no drawbacks upon his industry, no merciless landlord to crush him.” There was no mention of the cotton and iron riots in which the police forces were routed, not a word of slavery, Indian relocation, or women’s suffrage in discussing equality of voice. Andy had a selective memory; he preferred to ignore America’s underside, as he would when making his millions in steel while his exploited workers died by the dozens. Displaying no empathy for his relatives or sentiment for Scotland, Andy took a callous stab at the charter: “We now possess what the working classes of Your country look forward to as constituting their political millennium. We have the charter which you have been fighting for for years as the Panacea for all Britain’s woes, the bulwark of the liberties of the people.” He clearly and ruthlessly drew the we/you line. Hard eco-demographic evidence of America’s superiority was introduced in the remainder of the letter, a glossy picture of material progress during the Industrial Revolution. “Everything around us is in motion,” he concluded, “mind is freed from superstitious reverence for old customs, unawed by gourgeous and unmeaning show and form. This ‘doing of a thing’ because our grandfathers did it I can assure you is not an ‘American Institution.’”14 As the last lines suggest, traditions and his father’s way of doing things had no place in Andy’s world; any sentiment had burned away in Mr. Hay’s boiler room.
