Carnegie

by Peter Krass

  Carnegie was not the only one suffering a tainted legacy. The Amalgamated, which had over twenty-four thousand members in 1891, witnessed its membership drop below ten thousand within two years after Homestead, and never recovered from the blow the Carnegie Steel Company delivered with full force. O’Donnell, the deposed chairman of the Advisory Committee, who had been indicted for murder, riot, and treason, was acquitted in February 1893, as was every other Homestead man. The jury could not be bought. O’Donnell left a disgraceful legacy in the eyes of the union, however, for covertly conferring with Reid and offering to drop all demands except recognition of the union. O’Donnell went on to manage a small orchestra and later served as an editor for a weekly Chicago journal.

  After McLuckie was acquitted, he made a deal with Philander Knox in which they agreed to drop all criminal charges against concerned parties.84 The only notable victory scored by the Homestead men was in 1893 when Pennsylvania legislators passed an anti-Pinkerton law designed to prevent the deputizing of nonresidents. Part of the credit went to McLuckie, who, during the congressional hearings, charged that the Pinkerton guards were a “horde of cut-throats, thieves, and murderers . . . in the employ of unscrupulous capital for the oppression of honest labor.”85

  According to the story in Carnegie’s rather suspect autobiography, McLuckie eventually fled to Mexico to escape jail. A Carnegie friend and editor of his autobiography, John C. Van Dyke, happened to be in Mexico and stumbled on a penniless McLuckie. “I do not think I told him at the time that I knew Mr. Carnegie,” Van Dyke recalled in Carnegie’s autobiography, “and had been with him at Cluny in Scotland shortly after the Homestead strike, nor that I knew from Mr. Carnegie the other side of the story. But McLuckie was rather careful not to blame Mr. Carnegie, saying to me several times that if ‘Andy’ had been there the trouble would never have risen.” After returning to the United States, the story continued, Van Dyke relayed McLuckie’s situation to Carnegie, who then told Van Dyke to offer the runaway any money he required but not to say who it was from. McLuckie declined the help. The following year, Van Dyke again met the ex-Homesteader, who was making a good wage driving wells for the Sonora Railway in Mexico and had taken a Mexican wife. He told him the truth about the money offer. Stunned, McLuckie said, “Well, that was damned white of Andy, wasn’t it?”86

  But McLuckie had not disappeared into Mexico never to be heard from again. To the contrary, he remained a thorn the size of a steel plate in Carnegie’s side, never relenting in his public attacks. In 1896, McLuckie spoke before a Central Labor Union meeting in Haverhill, Massachusetts, at which he condemned Carnegie’s business practices and declared he wanted revenge: “In 1892 the men at Homestead had 300 Winchester rifles; now they have 3,800 and they are ready to use them if occasion requires.”87

  Van Dyke did indeed become involved with McLuckie, but not by mistake. In the 1890s, Van Dyke was advising Carnegie on the procurement of artwork for Carnegie’s Pittsburgh library. Sometime around 1898, Van Dyke was in Mexico, where he did come into contact with McLuckie. Then, on June 29, 1898, from Scotland, Carnegie wrote Van Dyke an apparently cordial letter, thanking him for a book and hoping he would visit next year, but in the margin he made two notations in pencil: “Give McLuckie all the money he wants” and “Rub this out.” Van Dyke did. But at some later point, for the benefit of future scholars and playing a little game to amuse himself, across the top of the letter he wrote: “This is the letter in which A.C. wrote in pencil to give McLuckie all the money he wanted and to ‘rub this out.’ See Autobiography p. 237.” Almost one hundred years later, a scholar did discover the letter and was able to identify the faint remains of Carnegie’s pencil note and quickly discovered that page 237 is Carnegie and Van Dyke’s sentimental but fanciful story about McLuckie.88

  Why would Carnegie want what he obviously considered a condemning pencil note rubbed out? Was his willingness to give McLuckie the money he wanted an admission of a guilty conscience, of outright guilt? Or was the truth that McLuckie was demanding the money to finally keep quiet and it amounted to bribery? There were no reports in the press of McLuckie’s movements at the time, but one had to wonder what the agitator was concocting to prompt Carnegie’s gift of money to a man sworn to revenge the Homestead tragedy? The only event on the horizon was the opening of the Homestead library to the public on August 1 and then the official ceremony in November. One might surmise that McLuckie had made a threat in connection to the impending opening, but only Carnegie and McLuckie knew the truth. The exact facts and motivation remain a mystery, but Carnegie was again dabbling in revisionist history.

  Another character in the story, John Potter, suffered a tainted legacy marked by tragedy. After the strike, the Homestead superintendent was kicked upstairs to become chief mechanical engineer for all the works. Disillusioned, he quit on November 1, 1893. In his resignation letter, he admitted that “about the time the strike was ended and our victory won, my career of usefulness also ended, and I was removed to a new field of labor. The cause for the sudden change is still as great a mystery to me as it was at the time it was made.”89 An oblivious Potter didn’t realize his shortcomings—not yet, anyway. Eventually, he moved to Latin America, where he remained until returning to Los Angeles in 1914. In 1925, he received an invitation to attend the twenty-first annual meeting of the Carnegie Veterans. On December 18, the day the meeting started, he walked to Carnegie Street in Los Angeles and shot himself in the head.90

  Notes

  1. Kimball to AC, January 27, 1892, ACLOC, vol. 14, and Estee to AC, March 15, 1892, ACLOC, vol. 14, as well as other letters in volume.

  2. Board of Managers Meeting Minutes, June 28, 1892, ACLOC, vol. 16.

  3. See Fitch, pp. 102–103; Brody, p. 53.

  4. Hendrick, Carnegie, vol. 1, p. 383.

  5. Brody, p. 50.

  6. A. C. Buell to a Mr. Cramp, January 8, 1892, Papers of Secretary of the Navy Benjamin F. Tracy, Library of Congress.

  7. Harvey, p. 163.

  8. Bridge, p. 204.

  9. Harvey, pp. 165–166.

  10. Henry C. Frick to John A. Potter, May 30, 1892, quoted in Wall, Carnegie, p. 552; Henry C. Frick to AC, May 31, 1892, quoted in Warren, p. 80.

  11. Warren, pp. 168–169.

  12. AC to Henry C. Frick, June 10, 1892, quoted in Bridge, p. 205.

  13. AC to Henry C. Frick, June 17, 1892, quoted in Bridge, p. 206.

  14. See June 23, 1892, letter from William Farmer, owner of Coworth Park, ACLOC, vol. 17.

  15. Henry C. Frick to AC, June 24, 1892, quoted in Warren, p. 84.

  16. William C. Oates, “The Homestead Strike: A Congressional View,” North American Review 155 (1892), pp. 355–375; Henry C. Frick to Robert A. Pinkerton, June 25, 1892, quoted in Harvey, pp. 114–115.

  17. Bridge, p. 210.

  18. Henry C. Frick to AC, July 4, 1892, quoted in Warren, p. 84.

  19. A number of books have been written on the Homestead strike. For a detailed account of events, see Paul Krause, The Battle for Homestead 1880–1892: Politics, Culture, and Steel (Pittsburgh: University of Pittsburgh Press, 1992).

  20. Harvey, pp. 129–131.

  21. AC to Henry C. Frick, July 7, 1892, quoted in Hendrick, Carnegie, vol. 1, p. 402.

  22. Krause, p. 42.

  23. Leon Wolff, Lockout (New York: Harper & Row, 1965), p. 181.

  24. G. Brooks, “Typical American Employer,” Blackwood’s (October 1892).

  25. Bridge, pp. 233–234.

  26. C. F. Black, “Lessons of Homestead,” Forum (September 1892); Lorant, p. 214.

  27. Henry C. Frick to AC, July 11, 1892, quoted in Warren, p. 85.

  28. Henry C. Frick to AC, July 11, 1892, quoted in Warren, pp. 85–86.

  29. W. W. Chamberlin, “Labor Troubles at Homestead,” Harper’s Weekly (July 23, 1892).

  30. AC to George Lauder Jr., July 17, 1892, ACLOC, vol. 17.

  31. Hugh O’Donnell to Whitelaw Reid, July 16, 1892, quoted in Hendr
ick, Carnegie, vol. 1, pp. 406–407; Wolff, pp. 203–204.

  32. Quoted in Hendrick, Carnegie, vol. 1, p. 399.

  33. Henry C. Frick to AC, July 23, 1892, quoted in Warren, p. 89.

  34. John Milholland memo on visit, July 30, 1892, in Harrison MSS, vol. 145, Library of Congress, quoted in Warren, p. 400.

  35. Quoted in Harvey, p. 149.

  36. Ibid.

  37. AC to Henry C. Frick, July 28, 1892, ACLOC, vol. 17.

  38. AC to William T. Stead, August 6, 1892, ACLOC, vol. 17.

  39. AC to Henry C. Frick, September 28, 1892, quoted in Warren, p. 91.

  40. See Warren, p. 93.

  41. Oates, “The Homestead Strike: A Congressional View,” pp. 355–375.

  42. New York Tribune, October 2, 1892.

  43. New York Tribune, October 12, 1892.

  44. See AC letter written on Grand Hotel de Sienne letterhead, November 27, 1892, ACLOC, vol. 17.

  45. Henry C. Frick to AC, November 21, 1892, quoted in Warren, p. 92; AC to Henry C. Frick, November 27, 1892, quoted in Harvey, p. 172.

  46. Harvey, p. 173.

  47. Henry C. Frick to AC, September 8, 1892, quoted in Warren, p. 95.

  48. Henry C. Frick to AC, November 28, 1892, quoted in Warren, p. 92.

  49. Pittsburgh Press, December 9, 1892, quoted in Bridge, p. 252.

  50. Hamlin Garland, “Homestead and Its Perilous Trades,” McClure’s (June 1894).

  51. Fitch, p. 104.

  52. William Cahn, A Pictorial History of American Labor (New York: Crown Publishers, 1972), p. 164.

  53. Hermann Suter, “Recollections,” unpublished manuscript, p. 34, WPHS, 1996.0325.

  54. S. A. Ford to AC, October 24, 1891, ACLOC, vol. 13.

  55. Wolff, 34.

  56. Sievers, Hoosier President, p. 236.

  57. Ibid., p. 249.

  58. AC to Henry C. Frick, November 9, 1892, and undated from Venice, quoted in Harvey, p. 157.

  59. See Scottish Home Rule Association invitation dated September 15, 1892, ACLOC, vol. 17; and Lord Rosebery to AC, October 10, 1892, ACLOC, vol. 13.

  60. John Morley to AC, April 3, 1893, ACLOC, vol. 19.

  61. George Lauder Sr. to AC, March 25, 1893, ACLOC, vol. 19.

  62. Abram S. Hewitt to AC, May 9, 1893, ACLOC, vol. 20.

  63. Editor of Engineering Magazine to AC, February 17, 1893, ACLOC, vol. 18.

  64. Thomas Mellon to AC, January 30, 1893, ACLOC, vol. 18.

  65. Philander Knox to AC, February 24, 1893, ACLOC, vol. 18.

  66. Fourth Assistant P.M. General to AC, May 15, 1893, ACLOC, vol. 20; AC to John S. Robb, March 7, 1893, ACLOC, vol. 19; V. Robert Agostino, A Track through Time: A Centennial History of Carnegie, PA (Pittsburgh: Wolfson Publishing, 1994), p. 15.

  67. William Gladstone to AC, September 19, 1892, quoted in M. R. D. Foot, ed., The Gladstone Diaries, vol. 13 (Oxford, U.K.: Clarendon Press, 1968–1994).

  68. AC to William Gladstone, September 24, 1892, ACLOC, vol. 17.

  69. William Shakespeare, King Lear, act III, scene iv.

  70. Ibid., act I, scene i.

  71. Ibid., act III, scene ii.

  72. AC to James Reid, March 20, 1893, ACLOC, vol. 19.

  73. Carnegie was always receiving requests for money, but based on the plethora of charitable letters to and from Carnegie in ACLOC vols. 18–23, in the spring and fall of 1893 he was definitely more active in giving money to family, friends, and even strangers.

  74. Margaret Marshall Fuller to AC, January 19, 1893, ACLOC, vol. 18; Susie Robertson to AC, October 17, 1894, ACLOC, vol. 28; R. A. Slater to AC, December 16, 1893, ACLOC, vol. 23.

  75. Mrs. Henderson to AC, February 13, 1893, ACLOC, vol. 18.

  76. Sarah Kerr Heistand to AC, March 13, 1893, ACLOC, vol. 19.

  77. William A. Clark to AC, February 3, 1893, ACLOC, vol. 18.

  78. Elizabeth Curtiss to AC, November 23, 1893, ACLOC, vol. 23.

  79. AC to Mrs. Alexander King, February 18, 1893, ACLOC, vol. 18.

  80. William Carnegie to AC, May 8, 1893, ACLOC, vol. 20; Charlotte Carnegie to AC, December 16, 1894, ACLOC, vol. 29; Robert Franks to AC, November 21, 1893, ACLOC, vol. 23.

  81. AC to Robert Pitcairn, December 30, 1893, ACLOC, vol. 24; Lorant, p. 196.

  82. John Morley to AC, December 31, 1893, ACLOC, vol. 24.

  83. J. G. A. Leishman to AC, May 4, 1893, ACLOC, vol. 20.

  84. Krause, p. 348.

  85. Peter Wild, “The Strange Story of ‘Honest’ John McLuckie,” Pittsburgh History (Summer 1997).

  86. Carnegie, Autobiography, p. 228.

  87. New York Daily Tribune, July 27, 1896.

  88. Wild, “The Strange Story of ‘Honest’ John McLuckie.”

  89. J. A. Potter to AC, October 19, 1893, ACLOC, vol. 22.

  90. Gage, “‘Hands-on, All-over’: Captain Bill Jones,” Pittsburgh History (Winter 1997– 1998), pp. 166–167.

  CHAPTER 22

  The Great Armor Scandal

  As if the Homestead strike aftermath wasn’t enough to contend with, Carnegie and his men were faced with national economic chaos and another scandal at Homestead. The country’s gilt and glitter was stripped away when, in March 1893, a financial panic hit Wall Street, which was, in a large part, blamed on America’s schizophrenic money policy embodied by the Sherman Silver Purchase Act of 1890. Wall Street believed that foreigners had little confidence in a country that backed the dollar with silver and gold, and indeed the Europeans had been cashing their investments and insisting on taking only gold with them. As the gold reserve was drained, the dollar weakened and the economy became vulnerable. Then, in February, an overextended Philadelphia & Reading Railroad failed. The next month, panic selling on Wall Street ensued.

  In Washington, President Cleveland attempted to reassure investors by announcing the government would pay its notes with gold, but Carnegie still feared the worst and felt compelled to advise the new president, “Unless all doubt is put to rest, there is still great danger of the country being drained of gold. . . . All excitement can be allayed and the crisis safely passed by the simple declaration from you. If I might suggest, somewhat like the following: ‘As long as I am President of the United States, the workingman is going to be paid in as good a dollar as the foreign banker is.’ I think this would also be good politics.”1 Like a chameleon, Carnegie the ardent Republican had already ingratiated himself with the Democrats; the only loyalty he served was in the name of material progress. In spite of Homestead, Carnegie’s knowledge about markets was respected. He also remained influential, for the next day Cleveland did indeed issue another statement in which he assured the public the government would do all in its power “to maintain the public credit and to preserve the parity between gold and silver and between all financial obligations of the Government.”2 Not exactly Carnegie’s words, but he did calm the financial markets temporarily.

  In May, however, there was another stock-market drop, and by the end of the summer 141 banks had failed. Congress hoped to bolster the economy by rescinding the Silver Act in November and paying all its obligations in gold, but it was too late. By year-end, sixteen thousand businesses had shuttered their doors and a four-year depression was well under way, with the iron and steel industry hit particularly hard. Prices were severely depressed, making profitability near impossible. In the first six months of 1893, there were thirty-two failures in the sector, including the once-feared Pennsylvania Steel Company and Oliver Iron and Steel Company, owned by Carnegie’s old Allegheny City acquaintance, Henry Oliver.3

  Throwing the steel market in further disarray, the rail pool collapsed, which was prone to happen when manufacturers were unable to maintain price levels and struck out to save themselves. Carnegie was actually pleased with the pool’s dismemberment; in some years it had cost the members up to a million dollars to pay other firms to stay out of the business, a cost that irked him. Also, he had never trusted their biggest rival, Illinois Steel, which had snaked some orde
rs in Carnegie territory in 1891—although there was always some poaching going on by both sides. Now he could strike back without hesitation. As the Pittsburgh Dispatch reported, “Carnegie has cut the price for steel rails about $5 a ton and proposes to knock out competition and make Pittsburgh the steel rail center of the world.”4 While the market contracted, Carnegie intended to thrive. In 1894, Carnegie controlled one-fourth of the nation’s steel output and could easily scoop a depressed market at his will.5

  There would be an attempt to reestablish the rail pool in December, with Frick handling the negotiations, but after he made preliminary agreements Carnegie, who was contemptuous of the competition, announced he wanted no part of it. “I do not think any one can stand in our way. . . . I get no sweet dividend out of second fiddle business, and I do know that the way to make even money is to lead. . . . we needn’t hesitate, take orders and run full, there’s a margin.”6 John “Bet-a-Million” Gates, who became president of Illinois Steel in 1894, later recalled, “Well, in those days we used to have a few agreements. The boys would make them and Andy would kick them over. . . . I know that if Frick and I would agree to anything in the forenoon, as between our two companies, he might tell me in the afternoon that Carnegie would not stand for it. In other words, no one in the Carnegie organization controlled Mr. Carnegie, but he controlled every other man.”7 For now, a price war ensued between Carnegie and Illinois Steel. As a result, Carnegie Steel forced drastic wage cuts on its men so the firm could push down prices and remain profitable.