by Peter Krass
7. AC to John Ross, August 17, 1914, ACLOC, vol. 225.
8. John Morley to AC, August 28, 1914, ACLOC, vol. 225; Carnegie, Autobiography, pp. 359–360.
9. Woodrow Wilson to AC, September 29, 1914, ACLOC, vol. 225.
10. William Jennings Bryan to AC, October 7, 1914, ACLOC, vol. 226.
11. AC to Kaiser Wilhelm II, October 16, 1914, ACLOC, vol. 226.
12. John Morley to AC, November 6, 1914, ACLOC, vol. 226.
13. John Morley to AC, November 30, 1914, ACLOC, vol. 227.
14. John Ross to AC, January 5, 1915, ACLOC, vol. 228.
15. AC to John Ross, January 18, 1915, ACLOC, vol. 228.
16. Strouse, pp. 13–14.
17. AC to Woodrow Wilson, January 23, 1915, ACLOC, vol. 228.
18. Hendrick, Carnegie, vol. 2, pp. 360–362; Winkler, pp. 298–300.
19. Marshall, pp. 167–168.
20. John Morley to Louise Carnegie, May 19, 1915, quoted in Hendrick, Carnegie, vol. 2, pp. 363–364.
21. Louise Carnegie to Theodore Marburg, July 29, 1915, ACLOC, vol. 231; Louise Carnegie to Robert Franks, August 10, 1915, ACLOC, vol. 278.
22. Charles Schwab to Louise Carnegie, September 15, 1915, ACNYPL.
23. John Morley to Louise Carnegie, October 31, 1915, quoted in Hendrick, Carnegie, vol. 2, pp. 364–365.
24. Marshall, pp. 227–228, 242.
25. Winkler, pp. 300–301.
26. Louise Carnegie to Margaret Carnegie, January 14, 1916, quoted in Hendrick, Carnegie, vol. 2, pp. 201–202.
27. John Morley to AC, December 31, 1915, ACLOC, vol. 232.
28. Earl Grey to Oscar S. Strauss, February 24, 1916, ACNYPL.
29. John Morley to AC, February 16 and March 6, 1916, quoted in Hendrick, Carnegie, vol. 2, pp. 367–369.
30. Edith Wharton to Louise Carnegie, n.d. (1916), ACNYPL.
31. John Morley to AC, September 15, 1916, quoted in Hendrick, Carnegie, vol. 2, pp. 370–371.
32. Frederic Harrison to AC, October 9, 1916, ACLOC, vol. 233.
33. Hendrick and Henderson, pp. 208–209.
34. AC to Woodrow Wilson, February 14, 1917, ACLOC, vol. 234.
35. Marshall, p. 281.
36. AC to Woodrow Wilson, April 7, 1917, ACLOC, vol. 235.
37. Hendrick, Carnegie, vol. 2, p. 383; Hendrick and Henderson, p. 209.
38. AC to John Morley, January 21, 1918, ACLOC, vol. 236.
39. AC to Woodrow Wilson, November 10, 1918, ACLOC, vol. 237.
40. Woodrow Wilson to AC, November 13, 1918, ACLOC, vol. 237.
41. Warren Staebler, The Liberal Mind of John Morley (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press for University of Cincinnati), p. 200.
42. John Morley to AC, November 21, 1918, ACLOC, vol. 238.
43. Hendrick, Carnegie, vol. 2, p. 381.
44. Hendrick and Henderson, p. 211.
45. AC to John Morley, n.d. (March 1909), ACLOC, vol. 164.
46. AC to John Morley, April 25, 1909, ACLOC, vol. 166.
47. Burton J. Hendrick, interview with Margaret Carnegie, quoted in “The Richest Man in the World: Andrew Carnegie,” produced, written, and directed by Austin Hoyt for The American Experience, WGBH, Boston, 1997.
48. Hendrick and Henderson, pp. 214–215.
The Carnegie Legacy
Andrew Carnegie died on August 11, 1919, at his Shadowbrook estate, the cause of death given as bronchial pneumonia. Louise was at his side and later that day wrote in her diary, “I was called at 6 a.m., and remained with my darling husband, giving him oxygen until he gradually fell asleep, at 7.14. I am left alone.”1
Hundreds of telegrams and letters of consolation from family, friends, and heads of state arrived at Shadowbrook.2 “I cannot realize that my most steadfast of all friends has gone,” John Morley wrote Louise, “nor do I realize that this letter will find you lonely in your home. Though he was far from me in place and sight, in thought he was close and constant. How little when we last said goodbye at the Liverpool Station, could we suppose that we were to meet no more, and that the humane hopes we had lived in, and lived by, were on the very eve of ruin. Our ideas and aims were just the same, but the fire and glow of his spirit was his own, and my debt to him from the year when Arnold made us acquainted, was more than I can find words for. His interest in me and my doings was for all this long span of time active, eager, indulgent, long-sighted, high pitched. My days of survival cannot be very far prolonged, but they will be much the more dull now that the beacon across the Atlantic has gone out.” Carnegie’s death, although expected, also dealt a blow to his cousin Dod, who, growing feeble, found consolation in that “I am tottering on the same brink.”3
Louise invited Charlie Schwab to ride with the family for the funeral services at Shadowbrook. Despite the Monte Carlo gambling episode, Carnegie had always regarded Schwab as a favored son, and almost twenty years later Louise and Schwab were still in contact. After his wife died in 1939, Schwab wrote Louise movingly, “We had fifty-six long years together, and they were happy years, I can assure you. It means a complete change in my life, which at my age is not easily arranged, and I will live on the happy memories of my associates of the years gone by, and none of these was more delightful or happy and with such genuine affection, than my association with Mr. Carnegie and yourself.”4 While Carnegie could be so cruel, he had a magnetic charm that left men like Schwab enraptured two decades after his death. Henry Clay Frick, who would die that December of 1919, was one of the few who resisted his allure.
Following the services, the Carnegie family, bound for Sleepy Hollow Cemetery, took a special train to nearby Tarrytown, New York. Carnegie had debated between there and the Pittencrieff Glen as his final resting place, but settled on Sleepy Hollow, home to many of New York’s elite families, as well as renowned author Washington Irving. A Celtic cross, the granite cut from a Skibo quarry, was placed above his grave and carved into its base these words: “Andrew Carnegie Born Dunfermline Scotland 25 November 1835 Died Lenox Massachusetts 11 August 1919.” It was simple and unostentatious, the image Carnegie had always wanted for himself.
On his death, there was great speculation as to Carnegie’s net worth. Newspapers estimated his fortune at $500 million to $600 million, but he had given away most of it. For once, he had done what he said he would. Measured in today’s dollars, Carnegie would have been worth over $100 billion at the height of his wealth, bested only by Rockefeller, who would have been worth over $200 billion. Software baron Bill Gates would then be third with a paltry $50 billion, depending on Microsoft’s stock price.5 However, as of June 1, 1918, Carnegie had given a total of $350,695,653.40 to philanthropic causes, and there was but $25 million left in the Hoboken bank vault.6 Rockefeller, who died in 1937, eventually gave away almost $500 million, but he also passed along over $500 million to his children—a disgrace according to Carnegie’s principles.
In his will, there were no provisions for Louise or Margaret; their financial security had already been arranged. All real estate was bequeathed to Louise. She returned to Skibo in 1920, where she kept Carnegie’s spirit alive until 1939, when world war again plagued mankind. She would die in 1946. Of the $25 million, Carnegie gave $20 million to the Carnegie Corporation and set $4 million aside for an expanded private pension list, to include $10,000 a year to former President Taft, $5,000 each to Mrs. Grover Cleveland and Mrs. Theodore Roosevelt, and $10,000 to John Morley. He provided gifts for the gamekeepers, foresters, crofters, and others on the Skibo estate; the Carnegie family butler, George Irvine, the housekeeper, Mrs. Nicoll, nurse, Nannie Lockerbie, and the eldest servant, Maggie Anderson, each received a legacy, too. Mrs. Nicoll had been with the family since the Carne-gies’ marriage thirty-two years earlier, and that relationship says a good deal about the real Carnegie, the hardworking boy from Dunfermline. He was tolerable and likable in the congenial setting of home life, but often a tyrant otherwise. The final $1 million was divided among educational institutions, including a $200,000 g
ift each to Pittsburgh University, Stevens Institute, and the St. Andrew’s Society.
Andrew Carnegie’s name remains prominent today, forever gracing the pages of national periodicals and haunting libraries across America. His major trusts and foundations—the Carnegie Trust for the Universities of Scotland, the Carnegie Dunfermline Trust, the Carnegie Institute, the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, the Carnegie Hero Fund Commission, the Carnegie Institution of Washington, and the Carnegie Corporation—continue his work. The Carnegie Corporation, with a capital fund of about $2 billion, remains a force in philanthropy and still supports libraries with a passion, giving $15 million in 1999 alone to urban libraries used heavily by immigrant popu-lations.7 The Dunfermline cottage Carnegie was born in is now a museum dedicated to his life; the Fifth Avenue mansion is a world-class art museum, the Cooper-Hewitt National Design Museum; and Skibo Castle is a private club, playing host to international jet-setting members.
As B. C. Forbes predicted in 1917, Carnegie is remembered “as a giver, not as a maker,” and the titan remains a model for philanthropy. Peter Drucker, one of the great students of business, credits Carnegie with establishing the template for charitable foundations.8 When the media evaluates benevolence, it is measured against Carnegie. Before his death, David Packard, cofounder of Hewlett-Packard, gave away $5 billion, almost his entire estate, and in 1997 was anointed “today’s Carnegie.”9 And the journal American Libraries asks, “Is Bill Gates the New Andrew Carnegie?”10 The philanthropic legacy has whitewashed the incisive statement made by the correspondent for the London Times at the time of the titan’s death: “Carnegie’s naturally kind and generous disposition and the memories and traditions of his Dunfermline proletariat days came into conflict with his consuming ambition. The business side always won.”11 Today, the Homestead strike has become shrouded in legend and the robber baron is part of American lore, along with Johnny Appleseed and Daniel Boone. It did take time for Carnegie’s image to take on a sort of benign legendary status.
In the mid-twentieth century, a feature in American Heritage titled “Epitaph for the Steel Master” didn’t gloss over Carnegie’s hypocritical behavior and fallibility, but the author did allow for an excuse, believing that Carnegie was “struggling to retain his convictions in an age, and in the face of a career, which subjected them to impossible temptations.” He then concluded, “In the failures of Andrew Carnegie we see many of the failures of America itself.”12 The steel master was merely part of a collective experience and therefore a collective guilt, unavoidable and expected. Today, when Carnegie’s business legacy is evoked, he is remembered with sweeping classifications, such as a business builder who embraced change, an executive trainer who was a master motivator, and a fanatic cost accountant who demanded perfect efficiencies. In excusing some of his unsavory tactics, we say, What is morally repugnant to us now was not back then. Yes, he was a typical employer to a degree. As a businessman, however, Carnegie was the most driven and competitive, the most obsessive and compulsive, the most independent and daring. He was so convinced of his own rightness—on business, politics, and philanthropy—that he couldn’t conceive of being wrong. He was intoxicated by his own holiness.
At a ceremony honoring his benefactions, Carnegie, who had a mask for every occasion, was at his animated best. This trip to Braddock in 1914 was his last to the Pittsburgh area. (Courtesy of the Carnegie Library of Pittsburgh)
And yet, at times he harbored doubts. Even in 1914, about to turn seventy-nine years old, he allowed his mask of conviction to slip when he spoke at the twenty-fifth anniversary of the Braddock Carnegie Library: “I don’t know how every one thinks about the way I spend money but I’m willing to put this library and institution against any other form of benevolence. It’s the best kind of philanthropy I can think of and I’m willing to stand on that record. This is a grand old world and its always growing better. And all’s well since it is growing better and when I go for a trial for the things done on earth, I think I’ll get a verdict of ‘Not Guilty’ through my efforts to make the earth a little better than I found it.”13 He thought he would be judged not guilty; but clearly, being guilty was on his mind.
Why the guilt complex at such a late stage in Carnegie’s life? Because he suspected he had exacted too high of a price from his laborers, and the visit to Braddock reminded him of it. Living and working conditions for laborers in the steel industry had yet to improve. In fact, the year Carnegie died there was a great steel strike. With the shortage of labor during the war, union leaders had hoped to organize the steel industry, and eighty-nine-year-old Mary “Mother” Jones declared, “We are to see whether Pennsylvania belongs to Kaiser Gary or Uncle Sam.”14 The campaign for better conditions began in 1918 and culminated on September 22, 1919, when 275,000 steelworkers in Illinois, Ohio, and Pennsylvania went on strike. After three months, the workers were forced to return without any concessions in hand and old Mother Jones was locked up in jail. Not until almost twenty years later, when the Steel Workers Organizing Committee, the embryo of the United Steelworkers of America, was formed, did conditions begin to improve. During World War II, the high demand for steel finally aided the union’s cause.
Today, the Edgar Thomson steel mill is the sole survivor of the Carnegie mills along the Monongahela River; the others have been razed. Its hometown of Braddock remains bleak, however; many shops on the main street are boarded up, and the town is empty of spirit. The stark contrast between the desolate streets of Braddock and the vitality discovered in Carnegie’s libraries best symbolize the great contradictions within Carnegie himself.
Notes
1. Hendrick and Henderson, p. 216.
2. See Queen Mary to Louise Carnegie, n.d., ACNYPL, and others in ACLOC, vol. 239.
3. John Morley to Louise Carnegie, n.d. (August 1919), ACLOC, vol. 239; Hendrick, Carnegie, vol. 2, p. 382.
4. Charles Schwab to Louise Carnegie, January 23, 1939, ACNYPL.
5. Floyd Norris, “Outlook 2000: A Century of Business,” New York Times, December 20, 1999.
6. Iron Age, August 14, 1919; London Times, August 29, 1919.
7. Beverly Goldberg, “Carnegie Corporation Gives $15 Million to Libraries,” American Libraries (August 1999).
8. Peter F. Drucker, “Good Works and Good Business,” Across the Board (October 1984).
9. “The Disinheritors,” Forbes (May 19, 1997).
10. Patricia Martin, “Is Bill Gates the New Andrew Carnegie?” American Libraries (September 1997).
11. London Times, August 12, 1919.
12. Heilbroner, p. 259.
13. Bobinski, p. 185.
14. Cahn, p. 236.
Notes
Manuscript Collections
ACLOC—Papers of Andrew Carnegie, 1803–1935, Library of Congress, Washington, D.C.
ACNYPL—Carnegie Autograph Collection, 1867–1945, New York Public Library, New York, N.Y.
ACWPHS—Carnegie Steel Company, Records, 1853–1912, Historical Society of Western Pennsylvania, Pittsburgh, Pa.
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———— The Autobiography of Andrew Carnegie. Boston: Northeastern University Press, 1986.
———— Round the World. New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1884.
———— Triumphant Democracy. New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1886.
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Duncan, David. Life and Letters of Herbert Spencer. London: Methuen, 1908.
Fabian, Larry L. Andrew Carnegie’s Peace Endowment: The Tycoon, the President, and Their Bargain of 1910. Washington, D.C.: Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, 1985.
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