Carnegie (7 page)

Having carried out his duties at Greensburg to his employers’ satisfaction, Andrew Carnegie was promoted to assistant operator on David Brooks’s recommendation to the General Superintendent of the line, the Fife-born James D. Reid. Reid commented: ‘I liked the boy’s looks, and it was very easy to see that though he was little he was full of spirit.’
¹⁹
Carnegie’s pay was increased to $25 a month and he considered himself ‘performing a man’s part’.
²⁰

Carnegie’s skills were soon to be further exploited. At that time international news entered America via the Cape Race receiving station, south of St John’s in Newfoundland, and from this the press built up their foreign news columns. The local papers employed one man to translate these wired despatches, and the Pittsburgh agent now offered Carnegie a dollar a day to prepare multiple copies of the despatches for the papers. This way Carnegie added $30 a month to the household budget, enabling the family to purchase the house Margaret Carnegie desired.
²¹
This was the house recently vacated by the Hogan relatives who had moved to East Liverpool, Ohio. The purchase price was $550. The Carnegies were now property owners – a situation that would never have been possible for them in Dunfermline.

As Andrew Carnegie prospered and became the financial bedrock for the family, his father continued to struggle; he was hardly better off than he had been in Dunfermline. He peddled his webs where he could but had little financial return. He became noticeably more despondent. On one occasion, when Carnegie was working on despatches at the Steubenville office, after a flood on the Ohio River had destroyed lines with Wheeling, he met his father on his way to Wheeling and Cincinnati to sell tablecloths. William Carnegie was to travel by riverboat and Andrew was shaken by the fact that his father could not afford a cabin and was to spend the night on deck. He attempted to comfort his father by saying, ‘Well, father, it will not be long before mother and you shall ride in your own carriage.’ Much touched, the usually undemonstrative William Carnegie replied: ‘Andra, I am proud of you.’
²²

The pubescent Andrew Carnegie seems to have had little interest in girls. Certainly his autobiography of 1920 and his other anecdotal writings offer no clues to any romantic leaning or girls’ names. Yet biographer Joseph Frazier Wall recounts a curious tale from the 1850s. Quoting a letter from Carl Engel to Robert M. Lester dated 24 April 1935 (and now in the Carnegie Corporation of New York files), he recounts how Andrew Carnegie was paid 25 cents, from time to time, by the Athertons to take their daughter Miss Lou Atherton to evening parties and escort her home again.
²³
Was Carnegie obsessed with staying one step ahead of poverty, suppressing any developing sexuality and giving all things a price tag? Possibly, but the dominance of his mother in his thoughts may also have put a dampener on any developing romance.

Andrew Carnegie said that two societies in particular were a ‘decided influence’ over his early life in America. The first was Pittsburgh’s premier club, the Webster Literary Society, where regular discussions took place on literature past and present, and the second was the Debating Society set up by the ‘Original Six’; members met at Henry Phipp’s workroom after the journeymen shoemakers had finished work for the day. In these two societies, Carnegie said, he learned the art of public speaking, for which he propounded two rules: ‘Make yourself perfectly at home before your audience, and simply talk
to
them, not
at
them. Do not try to be somebody else, be yourself and
talk
, never “orate” until you can’t help it.’
²⁴

The ‘Six’ clubbed together to buy copies of the
New York Weekly Tribune
, the Whig-turned-Republican newspaper founded by Horace Greeley in 1841. A letter to the
Tribune
from Carnegie on the slavery issue ‘enhanced his local standing’ in Pittsburgh.
²⁵
In debate and in print Andrew Carnegie still spouted the Dunfermline radicalism of his birthplace, but his ‘early political allegiance’ began to shift and his outlook was decidedly more American; something else was changing too, as his rich Dunfermline brogue was tempered by Americanisms.
²⁶
Public speaking and success at work helped Carnegie’s growing confidence. Secure in the fact that his family was earning the $300 per annum he once calculated that they needed for a comfortable life, Andrew Carnegie was psychologically ready for the next twist fate had in store for him.

The rising man must do something exceptional, and beyond the range of his special department.
HE MUST ATTRACT ATTENTION
.

Speech at Curry Commercial College, 23 June 1885

A
ndrew Carnegie was ready for a change. He had had enough of office life. Sudden judgements and resolutions like this were to be a hallmark of Andrew Carnegie’s advancement and prosperity. This time the change came through a man called Thomas A. Scott. In the early 1850s the railroads around Pittsburgh were still developing but there was a direct link between Pittsburgh and Philadelphia, and the O’Reilly Telegraph Co. anticipated increased business on the east coast with the new links.

Thomas A. Scott was one of the most notable pioneers of mid-nineteenth-century America. Like financier and steamship owner Cornelius Vanderbilt (1794–1877), Scott is hailed as a prime developer of public transport in America. He had worked his way up from farm boy at Blair County, Pennsylvania, to astute businessman. In many ways he shared certain character traits with Andrew Carnegie – both became resolute leaders, workaholics and commercial visionaries – and already Scott was a key figure in Pennsylvania railroad circles. He realised that the movement of trains would be greatly enhanced if the railroad had its own telegraph system. As usual, Scott was keen to embrace modern ideas that would expand his network.

Towards this end Scott needed a telegraph operator to run his new independent wire; as this job would only be part-time, Scott was also looking for a clerk-cum-personal secretary. A regular visitor to the O’Reilly Co., he knew of Carnegie’s reputation as a telegraph office operator. Could Carnegie be tempted to move? People shook their heads. They did not know what was going on in Carnegie’s head. John P. Glass offered Carnegie a salary of $400 a year if he would stay, but Carnegie was taking the long view. To him railways were the coming thing and thus offered greater prospects. A direct employment offer was made to him by the Pennsylvania Railroad Co. which he immediately accepted, taking up his new employment on 1 February 1853 at a salary of $35 per month.

All this news was put in a letter to his uncle George Lauder dated 14 March 1853: ‘I am liking [the job],’ he wrote, ‘far better than the old one. Instead of having to stay every night till 10 or 11 o’clock I am done every night at six . . . .’ Carnegie went on to say that his father was trying to sell some $70 worth of cloth and that his mother was buying new things for the house but that things ‘are double the price they are in Scotland’. He was still keeping up a keen interest in what was happening in Britain, and asked for his uncle’s comments on the new Tory coalition administration led by Prime Minister George Hamilton-Gordon, Earl of Aberdeen (1784–1860), and puzzled over the expansion of the French Navy of Napoleon III’s Second Empire; and he looked forward to the day when the United Kingdom and United States would unite ‘against Despotism’.
¹

Carnegie entered a new world of brakemen and firemen, ex-riverboat workers and railroad operatives, and found the ‘coarse men’ he met a cultural shock that he was not ready for.
²
In those days the railway employed ex-mariners, disillusioned gold hunters, illiterate new immigrants and a general hotchpotch of undisciplined humanity alongside the more diligent workers like Carnegie. For the rest of his life he would abhor foul language, sexual innuendo, chewing and smoking tobacco and drinking alcohol, all of which he now encountered in abundance. Yet around him there were some ‘respectable citizens’, and to his delight his friends David McCargo and Robert Pitcairn also found work with the Pennsylvania Railroad Co.

Although his formal education had been patchy, Carnegie was now absorbing a new style of enlightenment which would provide an important basis for the future. Each facet of his employment introduced him to current business practices and to the activities of all the companies on the railroad’s books. Carnegie shared an office with Scott and became so indispensable that up and down the Pennsylvania’s lines he was known as ‘Scott’s Andy’. This gave him inordinate pleasure, particularly when one day he was so addressed by the President of the Pennsylvania Railway, J. Edgar Thomson.

New lines were being laid through the mountains, and the village of Altoona developed as an important construction and maintenance depot. Here Andrew Carnegie nearly met his nemesis. One day he had collected the monthly payrolls and cheques from Altoona and was travelling back to Pittsburgh. As he preferred to ride in the engine cab, he had a rough journey and after a particularly hard jolt he reached into his coat where he had placed the payrolls to find that they had gone. Panic-stricken he asked for the train to be stopped. As it slowly reversed back up the line Carnegie spotted where the package had fallen. Greatly relieved, he retrieved it and climbed back on the train. He had one further problem: both the driver and the fireman had witnessed his carelessness. Would they report him? Luckily they did not, and Carnegie’s career was saved.
³

Now aged 18, Andrew Carnegie had already laid the foundations of his lifelong character traits. His employers and colleagues noticed his quickness of decision, his assertiveness and absolute confidence in himself, and his willingness to accept responsibility, and the audacity, self-reliance, ruthlessness and opportunism he displayed in carrying out his duties. Anecdotes abound about all these Carnegie traits. His opportunistic nature came to the fore again on another occasion. Just as he had taken liberties in David Brook’s telegraph office, he was to do the same in Thomas A. Scott’s. One day he arrived at the office to find that a serious accident had taken place on the Eastern Division line. This was not unusual: the log for 1853 had clocked up around 150 such accidents.
⁴
Freight and passenger trains were disrupted and Scott himself could not be found to give orders for unsnarling the rail traffic. Carnegie had issued countless orders in Scott’s name and with his authority, and now he did so again but this time
without
authority. The trains were ordered to proceed.

Carnegie had taken an enormous risk. When he found out what had happened, Scott neither praised nor censured Carnegie for his actions but later that day he spoke about it to one of his colleagues:

‘Do you know what that little white-haired Scotch devil of mine did today?’
‘No.’
‘I’m damned if he didn’t run every train on the division in my name without the slightest authority.’
‘And did he do it all right?’
‘Oh, yes, all right.’
⁵

His luck often made Carnegie smug, but after this incident he mused: ‘The great aim of every boy should be to do something beyond the sphere of his duties – something which attracts the attention of those over him.’
⁶
Carnegie’s risk-taking again paid off: Scott obtained permission from Mr Lombaert, General Superintendent of the Pennsylvania Railway, for Carnegie to be in charge of the Eastern Division during his absence. Told that permission was granted, Carnegie declared it ‘the coveted opportunity of my life’.
⁷

Another incident at this time nearly scuppered Carnegie for good with the railway. Thomas A. Scott was away from the office and so was not available to deal with a disciplinary matter. An accident happened which was entirely due to the negligence of a railway ballast crew. In such serious matters it was company policy to hold a ‘court martial’. Confident in the role that Scott had given him, Carnegie held his own court martial into the incident.
⁸
Having identified the culprits, he sacked one and suspended two others for four weeks without pay. It put him in bad odour with the workforce, foreshadowing Carnegie’s poor labour relations at another time and another place. He had certainly exceeded his authority; Scott knew it, but took no further action and let Carnegie’s decision stand.

Then there was the occasion of the letter. Among the businessmen of Pittsburgh there had been some criticism of the Pennsylvania Railroad. As a consequence Robert M. Riddel’s
Pittsburgh Journal
had published an anonymous letter in support of the railroad. Who had written it? Colonel Niles A. Stokes, lawyer for the railway, telegraphed Thomas A. Scott to ascertain who had written it . . . in his opinion some congratulation was due. Scott duly investigated and Carnegie admitted that he was the author. Scott was ‘incredulous’ and Carnegie smugly noted, ‘The pen was getting to be a weapon with me.’
⁹
Very soon after this, an invitation came for Carnegie to spend one Sunday with Stokes at Greensburg. Carnegie leapt at the opportunity and recalled:

The grandure [
sic
] of Mr Stokes’s home impressed me, but the one feature of it that eclipsed all else was a marble mantel in his library. In the centre of the arch, carved in marble, was an open book with the inscription:

He that cannot reason is a fool,
He that will not a bigot,
He that dare not a slave.

These noble words thrilled me. I said to myself, ‘Some day, some day, I’ll have a library . . . and these words shall grace the mantel as here.’
¹⁰

In future years the ‘noble words’ of the quotation which had ‘thrilled’ him graced the mantel of his library at Skibo Castle.

Andrew Carnegie prospered and his salary was advanced to $40, drawn in two $20 gold coins. They were, he said, ‘the prettiest works of art in the world’.
¹¹
His euphoria at his advancement was tempered by the decline of his father. In these early American years William Carnegie had contributed little or nothing to the family purse. Much of his woven material lay stacked in the house unsold. He also endured extended weeks of ill health. Despite everything, he had still not come to terms with life in America. Unlike his elder son, William Carnegie was not interested in American history or politics, and even when he became eligible for American citizenship he showed little interest. It was only because of Andrew’s nagging that on 20 November 1854 he presented himself to the Court of General Sessions for Allegheny County where the clerk received his declaration of intent. William would have to wait two years before the naturalisation would become lawful after taking a final oath. This never happened for William Carnegie died on 2 October 1855. The fact that his father had presented himself to the Court of General Sessions at all was lodged in Andrew Carnegie’s mind and he felt that this amounted to William becoming an American citizen; as he was considered a minor at the time, then he too was a citizen of America. Technically, however, Andrew Carnegie was never an American citizen; although his future enemies taunted him with this fact, his wealth and position meant that no one ever openly challenged his claim to American citizenship.