Part 28

We have been told that it is necessary to agree with a Scotsman or else kill him. But this is a left-handed libel, like unto the statement that the reason the Scotch cling to breeks is because the breeks have no pockets, and when the drinks are mentioned Sandy fumbles for siller, but is never able to find the price, and so lets some one else foot the bill. Another bit of classic persiflage is to the effect that there are no Jews in Scotland, because they could no more exist there than they could in New Hampshire, and this for a like reason: they find competition too severe. The canny Scot with his beautiful "nearness" lives in legend and story in a thousand forms. The pain a Scotsman suffers on having to part with a shilling is pictured by Ian MacLaren and Sir Walter. Then came Christopher North and Doctor John Brown with deathless Scotch stories of sacrifice and unselfishness that shame the world, and secure the tribute of our tears. To speak of the Scotch as having certain exclusive characteristics is to be a mental mollycoddle. As a people they have all the characteristics that make strong men and women, and they have them, plus. The Scotch supply us the eternal paradox. Against the tales of money meanness and miserly instincts, we have Andrew Carnegie, who has given away more money in noble causes than any other man who has ever lived since history began. The Scotch stand in popular estimate for religious bigotry, yet the offense of Andrew Carnegie to a vast number of people is his liberal attitude of mind in all matters pertaining to religion. Then the Scotch are supposed to be a pugnacious, quarrelsome and fighting people, but here is a man who has made his name known as the symbol of disarmament and international peace. Those three great and good Scotsmen, leaders in the world of business--James Oliver, Philip D. Armour and Andrew Carnegie--were each the very antithesis of dogmatists and sectarians. They respected all religions, but had implicit faith in none. All were learners; all were men of peace; all had a firm hold on the plain, old, simple virtues which can not be waived when you make up your formula for a man. They were industrious, systematic, economical, persistent and physically sound. If there is any secret in the success of the Scotch it lies in the fact that they are such good animals. The basis of life is physical. The climate of Scotland makes for a sturdy manhood that pays cash and seldom apologizes for being on earth. Unlike James Oliver and Philip Armour, Andrew Carnegie is small in stature. He belongs to the type of big little men, of which Napoleon, Aaron Burr, Alexander Hamilton and General Grant are examples--deep-chested, strong-jawed, well-poised, big little men who wear the crowns of their heads high and their chins in. These are good men to agree with. They carry no excess baggage. They travel light. They can change their minds and plans easily. Such men take charge of things by a sort of divine right. * * * * * Now, be it known that Andrew Carnegie was born in decent poverty at Dunfermline, Fifeshire, Scotland, in the year Eighteen Hundred Thirty-seven. His father was a weaver by trade. This was in the day of the hand-loom. There were four damask-looms in the Carnegie house, worked by the family and apprentices. There was no ring-up clock, and no walking delegates were in evidence. When business was good these looms sang their merry tunes far into the night. When business was dull, perhaps one loom echoed its tired solo. Then there came a time when there was no work; hopeless melancholy settled on the little household, and drawn, anxious faces looked into other faces from which hope had fled. Steam was coming in, and the factories were starving out the roycrofters. It is hard to change--in order to change your mind, you must change your environment. The merchants used to buy their materials and take them to the weaver, and tell him how they wanted the cloth made. The weaver never thought that he could get up a new pattern, buy materials and devise a scheme whereby one man could tend four looms--or fourteen--and advertise his product so the consumer would demand it, and thus force the merchant to buy. Aye, and if that didn't work, the whole blooming bunch of middlemen who batten and fatten between the factory and the family could be eliminated, and the arrogant retailer, wholesaler, factor and agent be placed on the retired list through the Mail-Order Plan. Or, aye again, the consumers' wants could be anticipated as they are by The Standard Oil Company, and the gentlemanly salesman, psychic in his instincts, would be at the door in answer to your sincere desire, uttered or unexpressed. When the times changed, Carnegie the Elder was undone. A few years later and his son Andy could have shown him fifty-seven ways by which the consumer could be reached. Andy would have known only one defeat, and that would have come when all the consumers were dead and ceased to consume. When Carnegie the Elder quit the loom, the consumers were using more cloth than ever, but the goods were being made in a new way. "Hunger is the first incentive to migration," says Adam Smith. Hunger and danger in right proportion are good things. It is a great idea for a woman who would give to the world superior sons, to marry a man without too much ambition. If too much is done for a woman she will never do much for herself. This proves that she is a human being, whether she can vote or not. Hunger, hardship, deprivation breed big virtues. Before deeds are born they are merely thoughts or aspirations. The desire to better her condition, and the struggle with unkind fate on behalf of her children, often is the heritage of mother to son. The mother endows the child with a tendency--a great moral tendency--a reaching out towards a success which she has never seen, as planet responds to the attraction of planet. And the things she dreamed, her child grown to manhood makes come true. Temperance fanatics are often the offspring of drunken parents. Shiftless fathers breed financiers. We are taught by antithesis. Andrew Carnegie is the son of his mother. When the looms stopped and the piteous voice of the father said, "Andy, we have no work," the mother lifted up her voice and sang one of the songs of Zion. There were always morning prayers. When there was no work, the father would have forgotten the prayers, because there was nothing to be thankful for, and prayer wouldn't stop the steam-factory. "What's the use!" was the motto of Carnegie the Elder. The mother led the prayers just the same. There was a reading from the Bible. Then each one present responded with a verse of Scripture. Legend says that little Andy, once, at seven years of age, when it came his turn to give a verse from the Bible, handed in this: "Let every tub stand on its own bottom." But as the quotation was not exactly acceptable, he tried again with this: "Take care of the pence and the pounds will take care of themselves." Thus do we see that the orphic habit was already beginning to germinate. Before Andrew Carnegie was ten years old he had evolved a beautiful hatred of kings, princes and all hereditary titles. There was only one nobility for him, and that was the nobility of honest effort. To live off another's labor was to him a sin. To eat and not earn was a crime. These sterling truths were the inheritance of mother to son. And these convictions Andrew Carnegie still holds and has firmly held since childhood's days. The other day, in reading a book on military tactics, I came across this: "An army has but two duties to perform: one is to fight the enemy and the other is to evade the enemy." Which duty is the more important the writer did not say. So let that pass. There are two ways of dealing with misery. One is to stay and fight the demon to a finish, and the other way is to beat a hasty and honorable retreat. "There is no work." "Then we will go where work is," said the mother of a multimillionaire-to-be. The furniture went to pay the grocer. The looms were sold for a song. The debts were paid, and there was enough, with the contribution of a ten-pound note by a fond uncle, to buy passage to New York for the father, mother, Thomas and Andrew. It was the year Eighteen Hundred Forty-eight. Thomas was sixteen, and Andrew was eleven. Tom was more handsome than Andy, but Andy had the most to say. The Carnegies came to Pittsburgh, because the mother's two sisters from Dunfermline were in Pittsburgh, and they had always gotten enough to eat. Then the sound of the name was good, and to this day Andrew Carnegie spells the final syllable "burgh," and pronounces it with a loving oatmeal burr. It was seven weeks in a sailing-ship to New York, and one week to Pittsburgh by rail and raging canal. The land of promise proved all that had been promised. The Carnegies wanted jobs--they did not wait to accept situations. The father found a place in a cotton-mill at a dollar and a half a day. Andy slipped in as bobbin-boy and got one dollar and twenty cents a week. Five shillings a week, all his own--to be laid in his mother's lap each Saturday night--spelled paradise. He was helping to support the household! To know you are useful, and realize that you are needed, is a great stimulus to growth. Never again did the Carnegies hear that muffled groan, "There is no work!" The synonym of the word "Carnegie" is work. In a year little Andy had graduated to the boiler-room at two dollars a week. It was twelve hours a day, a constant watching of water-gauges, and a feeling of bearings for hotboxes. Andy used to awaken the family in the dead of the night by roaring out in hot-mush accents, "The boiler, it ha' busted!" And being shaken into wakefulness the boy was much relieved to know that it was only a horrid dream, and the factory had not been blown into kingdom come because a wee laddie, red-headed and freckled, had nodded at his work. "A rolling stone gathers no moss." This is true. However, it is also true that if it does not gather moss, it may acquire polish. Andrew Carnegie from boyhood had the habit of using his head as well as his hands. The two years in the boiler and engine room of a little factory did him a lot of good. But when fourteen he firmly felt that he had to get out towards the sunlight, just as potatoes in a dark cellar will in the Spring send their sprouts reaching out towards the windows. In Pittsburgh at this time was a young man by the name of Douglass Reid, who was born in Edinburgh. On Sunday afternoon Reid used to visit the Carnegies and talk about old times and new. Reid was an expert telegraph-operator, and afterwards wrote "A History of the Telegraph." The more he saw of Andy the more sure he was that the lad could learn the dot and dash, and be an honor to the profession. The Carnegies had never had a telegraph-message come to them, and didn't want one, for folks only get messages when some one is dead. The way you learned "the key" then was to start in as messenger, and when there were no messages, to hang around the office and pick up the mystery by induction. One great drawback to acting as messenger was that Andy did not know the streets. So he started in memorizing the names of all the business firms on Penn Avenue, up one side and down the other. Then he tackled Liberty Street, Smithfield Street and Fifth Avenue. At home nights, he would shut his eyes and call the names until the household cried for mercy and shrieked, "Hold, enough!" Before the operators got around in the morning, the boys used the keys, calling up other boys up and down the line. Needless to say, young Andy didn't spend all of his time on the str