by Peter Krass
The black-and-red polished coach accommodating fourteen up top, with four horses, a driver, and a footman, the men adorned in silver-and-blue uniforms, impressed Carnegie. The experience of riding behind noble steeds, according to him, was “the most exquisite pleasure in life.”33 The first notable stop was Windsor, a quaint town dominated by the royal family’s Windsor Castle. While attending Windsor Church, they were surprised to see the Liberal prime minister William Gladstone and the Prince of Wales there for the services. To Carnegie, the seventy-one-year-old Gladstone, a heroic radical, appeared pale and haggard—a “sadly noble lionface”—not a vision of the majestic legend he imagined. In reflecting on the encounter, Carnegie called forth lines from Milton’s poetry:
A pillar of state: deep on his front engraven
Deliberation sat and public care;
And princely counsel in his face yet shone,
Majestic though in ruin.34
Gladstone’s unexpected physical decline troubled him, but for all of Carnegie’s outward emotional and sentimental expressions—teary eyes, broad smiles, wild gesturing—he still struggled to express his feelings, to disclose to anyone his innermost thoughts and fears. Instead, he continued to use the words of others like Milton, and, by flaunting his ability to quote the great poets, he masked his own self.
At Carnegie’s invitation, Sidney Gilchrist-Thomas, an inventor who greatly aided the steel industry, and his family joined the Charioteers for a Windsor dinner at which Carnegie and his mother, as they always did, made quite an impression on Thomas’s sister Lillian. “His devotion to his mother, a trenchant old lady who called a spade a spade with racy Scottish wit, was delightful to see,” she recalled.35 With Louise an ocean away, Margaret did indeed take center stage. On June 19, the party celebrated her seventy-first birthday; according to Carnegie, not a dry eye prevailed at the emotional tribute dinner. Under the spotlight throughout the trip, Margaret thrived. “The Queen Dowager [Margaret] and Aggie [King] were off to paidle in the burn after luncheon,” Carnegie memorialized her in his pennybook, “and as a fitting close they kilted their petticoats and danced a highland reel on the greensward, in sight of the company, but at some distance from us. They were just wee lassies again, and to be a wee lassie at seventy-one is a triumph indeed.”36 Over the course of the trip, she sang Scottish songs, including a ditty about marrying the one you love no matter what—unless you were one Andrew Carnegie.
The young and supple Louise did indeed remain on Carnegie’s mind, and on June 21 he took time to pen a letter to her. He also took no pains to water down his pleasure as he described the enthusiastic party, the pretty gardens, and the sumptuous picnics. He concluded, “It is all I pictured it, and more.” Louise could take some comfort when he concluded the letter by expressing desire for her company and asking her to write, care of J. S. Morgan and Company in London.37
As the Gay Charioteers moved north, they strolled alongside the carriage; picked handfuls of wildflowers; had roadside picnics; played lawn tennis; went fishing, rowboating, and yachting; and toured castles and cathedrals. To ward off chilly days, they nipped whiskey, sherry, or brandy, and nights were spent in country inns. In Stratford-upon-Avon, tribute was paid to Shakespeare at the bard’s gravesite. “I have been there often,” Carnegie wrote, “but I am always awed into silence as I approach the church; and when I stand beside the ashes of Shakespeare I cannot repress stern, gloomy thoughts, and ask why so potent a force is now but a little dust. The inexplicable waste of nature, a million born that one may live, seems nothing compared to this—the brain of a god doing its work one day and food for worms the next!”38 Mortality forever haunted the agnostic Carnegie, who lived in an age when death was indiscriminate. Eternal life, he always recalled to comfort himself, was achieved through words: “What a man says too often outlives what he does, even when he does great things.”
From Shakespeare’s village, it was on to the industrial heartland of the Midlands, aptly named the Black Country. “We see the Black Country now,” Carnegie wrote, “rows of little dingy houses beyond, with tall smoky chimneys vomiting smoke, mills and factories at every turn, coal pits and rolling mills and blast furnaces, the very bottomless pit itself; and such dirty careworn children, hard-driven men, and squalid women. To think of the green lanes, the larks, the Arcadia we have just left. How can people be got to live such terrible lives as they seem condemned to here?”39 The very question social workers would ask of the Pittsburgh slums housing Carnegie laborers. When it came to living conditions surrounding his own mills, the underbelly of the American industrial town, he was either completely blind, believing so righteously in the Great Republic, or he was too fearful to confront it, or it was simply a natural condition per Spencerian philosophy to be accepted in America, where everyone had an equal chance.
Almost a week was passed in the Black Country as Carnegie toured mills and conducted business. Meanwhile, back in his adopted country, on July 2, 1881, a lone gunman shot President James A. Garfield, and the Gay Charioteers were distraught as they scoured the London Times for details. Apparently the assassin was a disenchanted job seeker, angered by the Garfield administration, which was scandalized by squabbles over the filling of federal jobs. Fortunately, it appeared Garfield would recover and Carnegie sent congratulations. Of the coaching party, he was the most distressed because he had dined with the president just a week before departing on the tour, a testimony to his rising success. Politicians now considered him an industrial magnate to be tapped for electoral support, financial and otherwise. At the dinner they had discussed William Black’s popular Adventures of a Phaeton, a work Garfield had praised as Black’s best. Unfortunately Carnegie’s congratulations were premature; the president would die on September 19, to be succeeded by Vice President Chester Alan Arthur.
The coaching party was revitalized when, on July 16, the group entered Scot-land—Dunfermline and the triumphant library dedication were only days away. By now, Carnegie’s coaching trip was generating some press, too; his movements were reported daily, and wherever the handsome coach stopped crowds gathered to meet the native millionaire-hero. Carnegie embraced the publicity—the exact opposite of John D. Rockefeller, who, portrayed as rapacious dictator, became an aloof recluse. Carnegie knew he had arrived when the local police forces had to clear paths through the streets. The first night was spent in Dumfries, Robert Burns’s resting place; then they moved on to Edinburgh, and finally to Dunfermline. As they neared the outskirts, a white haired, bent-over figure approached; it was Uncle Lauder, now in his sixties, determined to ride next to his surrogate son, who was to be honored for his success and benevolence.
At the entrance to the city, a triumphal arch had been built and “Welcome Carnegie” banners graced the streets. Factories and businesses were closed, sidewalks were crowded with men, women, and children in their Sunday best, faces pushed through upper-story windows, and a mile-long parade stretched through the town, following the coach, as some twenty thousand people paid tribute. “The town was ablaze with flags and mottoes and streaming ribbons,” one of the Charioteers recalled,
the American stars and stripes waving everywhere, even over the noble old abbey where the Scottish kings lie in their stone coffins. Bells were ringing, drums beating, people shouting. The Chief [Carnegie], taken by surprise, his sunburnt cheeks pale, and, as he afterward confessed, a big lump in his throat, could only bow right and left, while the crowd swarmed about the coach windows and a hundred hands were outstretched to grasp his mother’s.
As for the rest of us, we felt a little like members of a royal progress, and a great deal like a part of a circus.40
At the ceremonial laying of the first foundation stone for the library, the provost of Dunfermline handed the trowel to Carnegie, who then insisted his mother perform the rite. She spread the mortar, gave the stone three taps for good luck, and announced, “I pronounce this memorial stone duly and properly laid, and may God bless the undertaking.” At the celebra
tory dinner, Dunfermline’s provost praised Carnegie, noting that “the only flaw in Mr. Carnegie’s character is that he wants a wife. I attribute that very much to the fact of his having a mother. His mother has taken good care over him, and has showed that she does not want to hand him over to the tender mercies of some half-cousin, or any of the half-dozen young ladies who are with him today.”41 Laughter followed, but the provost’s observations cut to his heart.
Carnegie, seated next to his mother, made a triumphant return to his hometown of Dunfermline, Scotland, to dedicate his first Scottish library. (Courtesy of the Carnegie Library of Pittsburgh)
So it was, on July 27, 1881, Carnegie celebrated his first major library benefaction. In the course of designing the building, the architect had asked Carnegie for his coat of arms, but he had none. Instead, he suggested a rising sun shedding its rays be carved into stone over the entrance door, along with the motto “Let there be light.”42 Libraries were his cathedrals, a holy place to worship knowledge. In these hallowed buildings, the sin of ignorance was washed away and individuals could improve their station in life. Libraries perpetuated social evolution. The founding of free public libraries was a tradition in Great Britain, which he aimed to pursue on a grand scale. He also wanted to follow in the footsteps of Ben Franklin, Colonel Anderson, and his father, who had cofounded a very modest library for weavers.
Following the tour’s climax in Dunfermline, on August 13, a large crowd saw Carnegie off at Liverpool. Once back in New York, he was in a melancholy mood, his friends having gone their separate ways and Louise still at her family’s summer home in the Poconos. “Two or three of the most miserable hours I ever spent were those at the St. Nicholas Hotel, where the Queen Dowager, Ben [Vandevort], and I lunched alone before starting for Cresson. Even Ben had to take an earlier train for Pittsburgh, and I exclaimed: ‘All our family gone! I feel so lonely, so deserted; not one remains.’ But the Queen was equal to the emergency. ‘Oh, you don’t count me, then! You have still one that sticks to you.’ Oh, yes, indeed, sure of that, old lady,” concluded Carnegie wryly, thinking of Louise Whitfield.43 Louise, for her part, continued to entertain other suitors and seriously questioned Carnegie’s interest in her; after all, he appeared more enamored with his cultural pursuits and his business concerns. Particularly distracting in the first year of their relationship was the climax of a major conflict with Edgar Thomson’s general manager, William P. Shinn, that then endangered the tenure of the invaluable Captain Jones.
Notes
1. AC to William P. Shinn, October 1878, ACLOC, vol. 4.
2. Hendrick, Carnegie, vol. 1, p. 216.
3. Andrew Carnegie, Round the World (New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1884), p. 38.
4. Ibid., p. 47.
5. Ibid., p. 76.
6. Ibid., p. 114.
7. Ibid., p. 198.
8. Ibid., p. 203.
9. Ibid., p. 251.
10. Ibid., pp. 249, 256.
11. William P. Shinn to AC, December 1, 1878, ACWPHS, Edgar Thomson Operating File.
12. AC to William P. Shinn, February 22, 1879, ACLOC, vol. 4.
13. Carnegie, Round the World, p. 273.
14. Ibid., p. 324.
15. AC to William P. Shinn, quoted in Bridge, p. 100.
16. Carnegie, Autobiography, p. 198.
17. Carnegie, Round the World, pp. 359–360.
18. Carnegie, Autobiography, p. 199.
19. Ibid., p. 327.
20. Wiltshire, p. 197.
21. Carnegie, An American Four-in-Hand in Britain, p. 182.
22. Burton J. Hendrick and Daniel Henderson, Louise Whitfield Carnegie (New York: Hastings House, 1950), p. 54.
23. Louise Whitfield, diary entry, February 7, 1881, quoted in Hendrick and Henderson, p. 57. The diaries and intimate letters remain in the possession of the Carnegie family and at the time of my research were not available; therefore, it is necessary to rely on excerpts quoted in the Louise Whitfield Carnegie biography.
24. Louise Whitfield, diary entry, February 10, 1881, quoted in Hendrick and Henderson, p. 57.
25. Louise Whitfield, diary entries, quoted in Hendrick and Henderson, pp. 58–59.
26. Hendrick and Henderson, p. 59.
27. Louise Whitfield, diary entry, April 16, 1881, quoted in Hendrick and Henderson, p. 59.
28. Hendrick and Henderson, p. 59.
29. Carnegie, Autobiography, p. 168; quoted in Hendrick, Carnegie, vol. 1, p. 210.
30. Thomas A. Morrison to AC, January 20, 1880, ACWPHS, Box 11, Folder 2.
31. Liverpool Daily Albion, August 5, 1882, ACLOC, vol. 263.
32. New York Herald, July 6, 1884, ACLOC, vol. 263.
33. Carnegie, An American Four-in-Hand in Britain, p. 34.
34. Ibid., p. 81.
35. Lillian Gilchrist-Thompson, Sidney Gilchrist-Thomas (London: Faber & Faber, 1940), p. 169.
36. Carnegie, An American Four-in-Hand in Britain, p. 195.
37. Hendrick and Henderson, pp. 60–61.
38. Carnegie, An American Four-in-Hand in Britain, p. 133.
39. Ibid., pp. 140, 150.
40. Anonymous, “Through Great Britain on a Drag,” Lippincott’s Monthly (September 1882).
41. Quoted in Hendrick, Carnegie, vol. 1, p. 236.
42. Carnegie, Autobiography, p. 203.
43. Carnegie, An American Four-in-Hand in Britain, pp. 336–337.
CHAPTER 13
War against the Steel Aristocracy
The first significant fissure in Carnegie and Shinn’s relationship—one that would eventually engulf Captain Jones—had appeared when Carnegie was in Rome in the spring of 1879, winding up his world tour. At that time, Shinn committed a major blunder by making a most presumptuous request. When Carnegie arrived at the Hotel du Quirinal in Rome, there awaited a lengthy letter from Shinn, who stated his case for why he should be made chairman of the Edgar Thomson Steel Company, filling the vacant seat left by McCandless. It was an audacious proposition, Carnegie thought, especially considering McCandless’s untimely demise and the fact that he, the majority owner, was not yet home. (The Edgar Thomson Company would expediently purchase the McCandless estate’s share in July.)1 His reply was firm: “Your personal [letter] was a genuine surprise. It never occurred to me that you would prefer to be called chairman rather than genl. manager, on the contrary the latter was your own choice. . . . Let the matter rest until my return, & we will meet as friends, desirous of pleasing each other & I am sure our happy family will remain one. Tom cares as little for names as I do, I think, and that is simply nothing—it’s the prosperity of the works we seek. That’s our pride.”
Carnegie considered the concern over titles, or names, rather petty. Once he had exited his fast-wheeling bond-selling days, he never did hold a formal title in any of his companies; on the other hand, the companies always had his name in their titles. Carnegie was also upset that Shinn had apparently given himself a raise from an $8,000 annual salary to $10,000, and concluded his note by saying, “Let me get a little time for breathing please—You travel fast in this direction.”2
More so than titles and money, it worried Carnegie that Shinn was looking to expand his power while the ruler was overseas. Three days after replying to Shinn, he wrote his favorite whipping boy, John Scott, to let them know he remained vigilant:
I think Mr. Shinn might have spared me his long letter of complaint—It has of course cut my holiday short & made me uneasy—Surely he couldn’t expect me to act on such a matter until my return—What use then in annoying me—I would not have done it to him had he been away. . . . His action after what I have done for him seems to me ungracious. Then he has gone into a damned gambling operation contracting for 45,000 tons low priced rails without first covering with Pig Iron—I can’t trust such speculative people as you & he appear to me to be. . . . Why can’t you try to reform & make yourselves respectable manufacturers in which hope your friend Andrew will offer up today in St. Peter’s a solemn p
rayer.
Good night My Boy I am glad you are better, I like you awfully, only I must give you a piece of my mind now & then.3
Having been away from the business too long and now paranoid, Carnegie held Scott partly responsible for Shinn’s greedy desires, and to subjugate him, he blasted Scott over the selling of rails at a low cost before procuring pig iron at a low cost, which was tantamount to gambling. (In some respects, he was a conservative businessman.) Calling him “My Boy” was particularly insulting.
Tension between Carnegie and Shinn was running high in the summer of 1879; Shinn wanted an answer on his bid to become chairman of the Edgar Thomson Steel Company, and Carnegie continued to demur. Only a trusted partner was going to sit at the head of a Carnegie company, and with Coleman and McCandless now gone, realistically it was going to be either brother Tom or Phipps. At an August meeting of the partners, Tom was the clear front-runner.
When Shinn realized he was not going to be anointed chairman, he threatened to resign as general manager and insisted on taking a vacation to the St. Lawrence River Valley for relaxation and fishing. Instead, he went to St. Louis to interview with a competitor, the Vulcan Iron Company, promising that if hired as general manager he would bring Captain Jones with him.4 When rumors finally filtered in to Carnegie about the Peerless Lime Company, the interlocking investment Shinn had created with his brother, and about Shinn visiting Vulcan, he was livid. Determined to expel Shinn, he declared to everyone who would listen that if his general manager didn’t resign, he would “make it so warm for Shinn that he would have his resignation before Christmas.”5
