by Peter Krass
Frankly, Carnegie had little use for politicians who could not be bought, and, true to form, during the campaign Blaine didn’t hesitate to ask for funding. “Are you willing to send me $7,500—and let me explain subsequently what I do with it?” Blaine wrote him.16 Fully expecting Blaine to win the presidency, Carnegie was shocked when he lost, but his failure didn’t stop Blaine from asking Carnegie for another $20,000 to help pay off his election debts, reminding the steel master that he remained his most successful friend in Washington.17 It was true. When Cleveland later acted on his promised initiative to reduce the protective tariff, a prospect that alarmed American capitalists, Carnegie’s most powerful friend in Washington successfully took up the battle on their behalf (and asked for a $1,000 donation to aid the fight).18 The monetary cost was negligible.
Throughout autumn, Carnegie and Louise remained just friends—until an actress came between them. Ellen Terry, an accomplished Shakespearean actress, was in New York playing Beatrice in Much Ado about Nothing, and Carnegie, who had made her acquaintance in London, sent her an invitation for a drive, promising the finest trotters in New York. “Oh! Oh!! Oh!!! I could weep,” Ellen replied, “for it has become an intense desire of mine to sit, if but for one hour, behind some fast trotters and I have never done so as yet. I cannot come! and am so sorry, but a bad cold must not be neglected and I must stay in bed all day for Beatrice’s sake and the evening’s work. . . . Very truly your Ellen Terry.”19
It was a small city in those days, so Louise soon heard of Carnegie’s interest in the beautiful English actress and expressed her surprise and pain. Carnegie, who was just attempting to escape his anguish over losing Louise, responded, “I only asked her in desire to get someone out of the ordinary. You had to be banished somehow. Now will you go with me at half past two, and let us have a talk. Perhaps this is all wrong, but I do wish to talk to you.”20 Carnegie sent this letter through his loyal footman, John O’Hara, and ordered him not to return until he had a reply—it was time to assume control. Louise agreed to meet with him and, after almost a year of trying to break off their relationship, they wholly admitted their love and became engaged again—this despite Carnegie’s confessing his promise to his mother to not marry until she died. All that needed to be done, they decided, was to keep their engagement a secret to not upset Margaret. Considering that Margaret was a complete invalid, Louise knew it wouldn’t be long before they could marry, so the arrangement wasn’t as unreasonable and farcical to her as the first go-round. Only Mrs. Whitfield was let in on their secret.
A routine resumed between Carnegie and Louise. In the morning he would send his man O’Hara with an invitation for her—perhaps a visit to St. Patrick’s Cathedral to swim in the music, or a Nineteenth Century Club meeting, or the theater—and then, at the appointed hour, Carnegie would arrive at the Whitfield residence. They also went for long walks through Central Park; they rode in all weather, with Carnegie on his favorite horse Roderick; they explored the open fields north of Fifty-ninth Street where some colonial houses still stood; they went for carriage rides up into the Bronx, then lush, dense tree groves; and they visited Edgar Allan Poe’s old cottage. The constant companionship fed rumors of romance, which they denied despite the occasional slipup.21
Never thrilled with Carnegie’s now annual pilgrimage to Great Britain, Louise resigned herself to it as summer approached. But because of his mother’s physical frailty and his own health weakened by illness and overwork, Carnegie doubted he would make the journey that year. “Mother, I regret to say, is an invalid,” he admitted to Morley, “and I fear I must never leave her again. She is one of the grandest characters you ever heard of—a true heroine. My ambitious plans give place to her claims and I shall not desert her. I can’t flatter myself that she can ever cross the Atlantic.”22 It was one thing to announce in public his mother was his heroine, but to do so in private letters proved how strongly Carnegie felt for her. He canceled plans for Britain.
Carnegie took his mother to Cresson in hopes the fresh air would revive her. In June, he came down from the mountains to preach at Pittsburgh’s Curry Commercial College. The title of his sermon was “The Road to Business Success.” From his experiences, he delivered unto them some of his most oft-quoted axioms:
The rising man must do something exceptional, and beyond the range of his special department. HE MUST ATTRACT ATTENTION. . . . Always break orders to save owners. There never was a great character who did not sometimes smash the routine regulations and make new ones for himself. . . . Boss your boss just as soon as you can; try it on early. There is nothing he will like so well if he is the right kind of boss; if he is not, he is not the man for you to remain with—leave him whenever you can, even at a present sacrifice, and find one capable of discerning genius. . . . “Don’t put all your eggs in one basket” is all wrong. I tell you “put all your eggs in one basket, and then watch that basket.” . . . Look out for the boy who has to plunge into work direct from the common school and who begins by sweeping out the office. He is the probable dark horse that you had better watch.
That dark horse was Carnegie, of course. To soothe any painful memories from his struggle to escape poverty, he’d become sentimental about those early years. From his lofty pedestal, however, he failed to explain to the students that it took him a good ten years to put all the eggs in one basket and that he still owned a wide variety of railroad and insurance stocks, among others, as well as land and properties. (He owned stock and bonds in some twenty companies that were not directly related to his iron, steel, and bridge manufacturing, or to his newspaper syndicate.)23
Shortly after his visit to Curry Commercial College, Carnegie’s plans for the summer changed when he decided to sail for Britain, after all, explaining to Louise, “Mr. Phipps and Mr. Lauder go along and Mother really asked me to go . . . and really my newspaper business demands my presence for a week or two in London. Then two weeks in Scotland is all I have.”24 In fact, there was a very legitimate reason for his going: the newspaper syndicate was very sick, financially speaking.
Louise put on a brave face, claiming she always knew he would eventually go; but then, just a month after his departure, tensions arose, beginning with a letter from Carnegie: “Well, my Dear, here we are in the Whirl. . . . Rather lonely some mornings, at breakfast in my room alone, but I like it some ways. Bachelordom has its advantages! I miss Mother much in such big rooms and wish a certain young lady were only here to brighten them up with her smiles and silvery laugh; but she is having fine hours with many admirers no doubt.”
It upset Louise that time and again her Andrew couldn’t give her a compliment without mentioning his mother in the same whispering breath. He had great difficulty in ever giving a compliment without it being backhanded. Then Carnegie, who could be extremely insensitive to others’ feelings, mentioned a Mary Anderson, who was apparently quite beautiful, and the actress Ellen Terry, which really roused Louise: “I spent last Sunday with the Howards and Clapham Hall and next I go to the Arnolds. Of course Matthew Arnold and Herbert Spencer have been with me here to lunch. Today Edwin Arnold comes and a party of twelve. Mary Anderson couldn’t come, unfortunately. (Maybe you are glad.) She is much prettier and younger than Ellen Terry.” It did little to soothe her feelings when he told her he was castle shopping in Scotland, but wanted her there to help.25 So what? Louise decided to inform him she was having a glorious time at a Catskills summer resort hotel, where the weather was glorious, the riding was glorious, the painting was glorious, and, yes indeed, potential suitors inhabited every room.
Louise’s letter appeared so buoyant and seemingly indifferent to him that Carnegie exposed his hidden side, the paranoid and insecure man, and he admitted to her he was genuinely pained. Flabbergasted by his childish jealousies, Louise let loose with a good scolding: “My dear Andrew what a goose you are! . . . Shall I tell you the truth of the summer? . . . The summer stretched away such a long dreary space before me and it seemed to me such a
sacrilege to even talk about ‘having good times,’ but I said to myself, ‘He evidently enjoys himself just as much with others as he does with me. . . . I will pretend that I enjoy it too.’”26 Any doubts Carnegie harbored about her commitment were swept away. Meanwhile, because of problems at the newspaper syndicate, his summer in Britain turned out as dreary as hers in the Catskills.
With arguments arising between Storey, Graham, and himself over the editorial content and finances of the newspaper syndicate, Carnegie’s dream of owning an interest in a newspaper was becoming a nightmare. At first, the relationship between Carnegie and Storey had been congenial, with Carnegie only occasionally annoying Storey with his stabs at British icons such as Tennyson when he was knighted. “He stands as a miserable example—the highest art of all, poetry, is prostituted to claims of birth,” Carnegie wrote Storey. “‘A weak old man’ is the verdict here. Barren Tennyson he has been for years. I don’t want to see him now. I think Matthew Arnold would hesitate to accept such a humiliation.”27 His attempts to influence Storey’s political agenda, such as voting for home rule for Ireland, were also an irritation.28
Two years into the venture, Carnegie’s concerns had shifted from Storey’s politics to the financial hemorrhaging of the newspaper syndicate, and he proposed a consolidation of operations: “I hope you are ready with your scheme to consolidate all the papers. . . . I do not feel inclined to go on investing more capital at present but of course will pay my share of any assessment made. We would be a strong power were all of our papers merged into one, and could then strike as a thunderbolt, whereas we are now merely showering the enemy with small darts none of which are strong enough to pierce their armor. Even the London ‘Echo’ should be merged.”29 But the newspaper business was not steel. Editors at the individual papers were highly independent and fought for their autonomy, and the implementation of the “thunderbolt” strategy failed. “Don’t be discouraged—I never mounted a horse first time that had go in him which didn’t kick,” Carnegie, who tried to remain sanguine, wrote Storey. “All our enterprises have gone wrong at first. All came right when reconstructed. You are the sole manager of business matters. Go ahead.” But then, immediately after giving Storey his head, he compulsively offered advice: “Put a man at Wolverhampton in full charge as you suggest. No divided authority. This is essential. Graham had a good business & profitable one—I agree he lacks the ‘go.’ Your man should be told he is to have a fair trial. But we know one test only—success. We will change till we get an augur that will bore. . . . We don’t know how to give it up.”30 The quality of the man and ensuring he was the right fit was paramount to Carnegie, but pushing Graham to the side didn’t resolve the syndicate’s financial troubles. Again, he failed to realize steel and media were two different animals requiring different management skills.
Although the chain of newspapers continued to bleed, some political successes soothed Carnegie’s wounds. With the syndicate’s support, John Morley won a seat in Parliament as a representative from Newcastle. The trusted man was immediately an influential government player, and the literary community’s loss was certainly a victory for the radicals. Carnegie also liked to think the syndicate helped push through the 1884 Reform Act that doubled the electorate, enfranchising most agricultural workers and miners. Just as important to him was the rapport he established with Gladstone.
No other native or British-born American tycoon—Morgan, Rockefeller, or Vanderbilt—was welcomed or enjoyed the inner sanctum of British politics like Carnegie, and the same could be said when he later thrust himself onto the American political stage. Between the influence the newspaper syndicate wielded and the fact that Carnegie donated thousands of pounds to the Liberal Party, Gladstone could not ignore the brash American. When in the Star-Spangled Scotchman’s company he certainly couldn’t ignore him. Carnegie spoke to Gladstone brazenly—“breezy talk” he called it—about America’s superior democratic system and Britain’s troubles. Economic statistics spilled from his mouth, offered as proof of America’s superiority while he argued Britain was to the United States what Greece had been to Rome—the headquarters of its culture but unimportant materially. The Crown and the House of Lords had to go, he would repeat at each meeting with the prime minister, and Ireland, Wales, and Scotland should be treated as independent states within a larger federal system, like a New York, Virginia . . . and on and on. Gladstone could hardly get a word in, only able to exclaim, “Oh—Ah— How extraordinary—Wonderful—Incredible—Astounding!” Mrs. Gladstone would remark to the audacious Carnegie, “William tells me he has such extraordinary conversations with you.”31
Once their relationship was established in the mid-1880s, Gladstone was pummeled with almost as many letters as Carnegie’s business lieutenants. In an April 1885 letter he informed the prime minister that he had ordered a stick cut from a honey locust tree near George Washington’s tomb at Mount Vernon, which was now being cured by Tiffany and Company, as a gift. “I hope you will long be spared to use it,” he wrote, “and that you will like to carry it with you, and that it will serve to turn your thoughts at times to your ‘kin beyond the sea’—to this giant child of dear old England, who, profiting by the wisdom and labors of her mother, has gone one step further in the upward path of political progress, and founded her institutions on the political equality of the citizen.”32 Just as Carnegie could not express his love for Louise without mentioning his mother, he could not pay tribute to his native land without asserting American superiority, and one can only speculate how Gladstone responded to the backhanded compliment.
Carnegie attempted to set the prime minister’s political agenda, everything from his travel plans—recommending a tour that would take Gladstone through Niagara, Chicago, Cincinnati, Pittsburgh, and Washington—to foreign policy:
Do come over and at a farewell banquet in New York (the only public appearance) stand and proclaim to mankind that hereafter that Nation is morally in the wrong who draws the Sword without first offering to submit to arbitration. England and America have said it.
I write this that it may demand your grave and conscientious consideration. Depend upon it, Mr. Gladstone you can in no other way so greatly serve man as in doing what I here suggest.33
Although Carnegie wanted only what was best, peaceful resolutions to conflict, his presumption was not lost on Gladstone, who never did visit the United States.
When debate over home rule for Ireland reached a climax in late 1885 and early 1886, Carnegie delivered the charge to Gladstone: “Your position upon the Irish question seems to me certain to win and to crown your career with the most important legislation which even you have ever carried. I suggest therefore that you take an early opportunity to refer to the rights of States in the American Union as being the proper position for Ireland. Such a measure will strengthen the bonds of union between Ireland and Great Britain; for America has proved through the federal system that the present self-government of the parts produces the strongest government of the whole.”34 Contrary to Carnegie’s rosy prediction, Gladstone’s Home Rule Bill was defeated in July 1886. He then resigned as prime minister, a serious blow to the Liberals.
As Gladstone struggled in his final months of office, so did Carnegie’s newspaper syndicate, which was under continuous attack from the conservative press. The newspapers Carnegie subsidized began to lose their legitimacy, partly because the righteous steel master was too naive and idealistic in his views that the privileged class could be overthrown. Class was a way of life in Britain, providing structure and stability, as did the church; even those on the lower rungs often embraced the status quo, in spite of Carnegie’s exhortations otherwise. There was no time for peasant uprisings; the laboring class was too busy struggling to put bread on the table. Also, the workingmen were not as interested in reading a newspaper spouting Carnegie’s political agenda as they were in catching up on the latest football and rugby scores and town gossip.
A bloodless revolution took time an
d money, but Carnegie had no patience for it. In 1885, he abruptly decided to sell most of his share in the newspaper syndicate to Graham and Storey. Even in failure, good fortune remained on his side. To regain control of his London Echo, Passmore Edwards paid $500,000, double what Carnegie and Storey had bought in for, and Carnegie almost broke even on the entire venture.35 He later said the newspaper syndicate was “one of the forms in which I may be said to have sown my wild oats.”36 That was his excuse, anyway. What he really learned was that a thick skin was needed before climbing on the political stage, where the spotlight was harsh, highlighting and expanding every blemish of character, every conceivable motive, and marking any target susceptible to mud-slinging. Because the iron and steel trade papers had always supported him, Carnegie had never before faced such public criticism; in the end, he decided the trade-off of political power versus opening himself up to public attack was not worth it. From now on, he would limit his power plays to using his money to influence the men in high positions who wielded power directly.
