Uncle John's Bathroom Reader Plunges into Pennsylvania (4 page)

More roadside attractions on
page 271
.

Pennsylvania's state capital offers clean living and a whole lot of history
.

Town:
Harrisburg

Location:
Dauphin County

Founding:
1791

Population (2008):
47,000

Size:
11.4 square miles

County Seat:
Yes

The town was named for John Harris Sr. and Jr., a father and son who were among the region's first white settlers. John Sr. arrived around 1700 and set up a trading post (the first in the area) and ran a successful ferry service across the Susquehanna River. John Jr. laid out the town in 1785.

 

What is Pennsylvania-speak? Some of it is borrowed from Amish or eastern European influences, and some is just regional shorthand
.

Term:
It's all

Meaning:
There isn't any more

Example:
After you request chipped ham (thinly sliced ham), the guy at the deli counter tells you, “Sorry, but it's all.”

Term:
Leave

Meaning:
Let

Example:
“Hold on tight and don't leave go.”

Term:
Outen (or
close
) the light

Meaning:
Shut off the light

Example:
“Before you go to sleep, outen the light.”

Term:
Redd (also
red
or
read
)

Meaning:
To straighten or tidy

Example:
“After dinner, go on upstairs and redd up your room.”

Term:
What for

Meaning:
Which

Example:
“What for golf club are you gonna use on this shot?”

Term:
'N'at

Meaning:
Etcetera, a shortened version of “and that.”

Example:
“For the barbecue, we bought hamburgers, kielbasa, buns, 'n'at.”

Term:
Let

Meaning:
Leave

Example:
“When you're done with the cereal, please let it on the table.”

Term:
Heyna (also
henna, ayna
, or
haynit
)

Meaning:
Request for affirmation at the end of a sentence, meaning “Isn't that correct?”

Example:
“Sure is hot today, heyna?”

Term:
“Ho, butt!”

Meaning:
“Yo, bud!” or “Hey, you!”

Example:
Used when calling out to get someone's attention in a friendly way. “Ho, butt! How 'bout those Steelers?”

Term:
Wash my hairs

Meaning:
To shampoo one's hair

Example:
“After wearin' my sweaty Pirates cap, I decided to wash my hairs, so they weren't all panked down [flattened].”

For more Pennsylvania-isms, turn to
page 134
.

Pennsylvania's self-made steel mogul Andrew Carnegie was a philanthropist and business genius. But many people cite his contempt for unions and the low salaries he paid his workers as examples of capitalist greed. Hero or villain? Will the real Andrew Carnegie please stand up?

Andrew Carnegie started out poor. His father, Will, was a weaver and a pro-labor radical in his hometown of Dunfermline, Scotland. But during the 1840s, when steam-powered looms began to replace workers, Will Carnegie found himself without a job and unable to support his family. So in 1848, 13-year-old Andrew, his parents, and his younger brother set out for the United States, hoping to improve their fortunes.

At first, life in their new home wasn't much better. The Carnegies settled in Pittsburgh's smoky, soot-filled slums. Will Carnegie went to work in a cotton factory, and Andrew got a job at the same mill as a bobbin boy—he brought the weavers empty spindles and took away the full ones. He hated the job; the work was tedious and it kept him inside for more than 12 hours a day. But he took home $1.20 a week, money that his struggling family needed.

At 14, Andrew got a new job as a messenger boy in a local telegraph office. He now made $2.50 a week and spent a lot of time running errands, giving him the chance to visit Pittsburgh's libraries and theaters when he had messages for them. He particularly liked the theater and always tried to take its messages at night so he could stay and watch the shows.
These experiences helped instill in him an appreciation for culture and the arts that would last the rest of his life.

Carnegie impressed his bosses at the telegraph office early on—he could decipher Morse code messages quickly without having to write them down. He also memorized the addresses and people to whom he delivered messages so that he could greet them on the street if he saw them. Before long, he'd moved up again: this time, Carnegie became the personal secretary and telegraph operator for Thomas A. Scott, an administrator at the Pennsylvania Railroad. Of the salary Scott paid him ($35 per month), Carnegie said later, “I couldn't imagine what I could ever do with so much money.”

Over the next few years, Carnegie continued working his way up to higher positions—and better pay—at the railroad. Eventually, when Scott was promoted, Carnegie took over his job and became the head of the railroad's Pittsburgh division. Much of Carnegie's drive for success was out of necessity: by the time he was 20, his father had died and he was his family's only wage earner.

Carnegie also made some smart investments. His first success: $217.50 invested in Pullman sleeping railroad cars gave him a $5,000 return. Later, he made more successful investments in oil.

His work at the Pennsylvania Railroad also brought him into contact with capitalism's ugly side. In 1856, Carnegie learned about an upcoming railroad strike when an informant told him about it and named the unions involved. Despite his own history as a laborer (and his father's history as a labor supporter),
Carnegie told Thomas Scott about the union workers' plans. The result: Scott fired all of the workers who were planning to strike, and the walkout never happened. Andrew Carnegie got a promotion.

When the Civil War broke out in 1861, Pittsburgh became one of the Union's industrial centers, and its factories began making cannons and gunboats. Thomas Scott got a job as a military supervisor and brought Andrew Carnegie along. They were in charge of overseeing the repair and maintenance of telegraph and rail lines, which kept goods and communication moving between officials in the North and the troops on the battlefield.

When the war was over, Carnegie decided to leave the Penn sylvania Railroad and open his own businesses. In 1865, he founded the Keystone Bridge Company, which concentrated on building iron railroad bridges to replace existing wooden ones. This was nothing new, but Carnegie's business model was—and it changed the way people sold iron. Previously, one mill produced the original (or pig) iron, another converted it to bars, and still others manufactured iron goods from those bars. Carnegie took over all the processes, eliminating middlemen, improving transportation costs, and bringing in high profits.

In 1867, he opened the Keystone Telegraph Company. Its main project: stringing telegraph lines from railroad posts so the entire state of Pennsylvania would have access to telegraph communication. By 1868, Carnegie was making more than $50,000 a year, almost 80 times as much as the average worker.

In 1868, Carnegie was doing so well that he toyed with the idea
of retiring when he turned 35 in 1870. He wrote, “To continue much longer overwhelmed by business cares and with most of my thoughts wholly upon the way to make more money in the shortest time, must degrade me beyond hope of permanent recovery.” Still, he started on a new business venture—this time, in steel.

In 1872, he built his first steel mill—what became the Carnegie Steel Company—near Pittsburgh. Using his experience in the iron industry, Carnegie transformed the American steel business. He used Britain's efficient new Bessemer steelmaking furnaces and cut costs by getting rid of middlemen, buying the iron-ore fields that provided raw materials, and buying railroads to transport ore to his steel plants.

These changes led to big profits for the company, but they also cut costs for consumers, and Carnegie's low-priced steel helped make the United States the world's industrial powerhouse. Carnegie steel was used to build skyscrapers, bridges, railroad tracks, and trains all over the country. And Carnegie himself became a celebrity, seen by the public as a self-made millionaire who also seemed to embrace his working-class roots. In 1886, Carnegie even wrote an essay for
Forum
magazine championing the right of workers to form a union. But that reputation was about to be stained by one of the most brutal conflicts in American labor history: the Homestead strike.

For the rest of the story, turn to
page 78
.