Part 29

eets. A substitute operator was needed one day, and Andy volunteered to fill the place. He filled it so well that the regular man, who was a bit irregular in his habits, was given a permanent vacation. At this time all of the telegraph business was taken care of from the railroad-offices, just as it is now in most villages. "Who is the sandy, freckled one?" once asked Thomas A. Scott, Superintendent of the Pittsburgh Division of the Pennsylvania Railroad. "He's a Scot from Scotland, and his name is Carnegie," was the answer. The play on words pleased Mr. Scott. He got into the habit of sending his messages by young Carnegie. And when one day he discovered that the Scotch lad had spoken of him as "Tomscot" over the wire, the economy of the proceeding so pleased him that he took Andy into his personal service at a raise of ten dollars a month. About this time there came a sleet-storm which carried down the wires. Volunteers who could climb were in demand. Young Carnegie's work indoors had reduced his physical powers, so climbing was beyond his ability. It was a pivotal point. Had he been able to climb he might have evolved into a construction boss. As it was he stuck to his desk, and eventually owned the line. Thus did he prove Darwin's dictum that we are evolved by our weakness quite as much as through our strength. Daniel Webster once said that the great disadvantage in the practise of law is that the better you do your work, the more difficult are the cases that come to you. It is the same in railroading--or anything else, for that matter. Cheap men can take care of the cheap jobs. The reward for all good work is not rest, but more work, and harder work. Thomas A. Scott was a man of immense initiative--his was the restless, tireless, ambitious nature which makes up the composite that we call the American Spirit. Andrew Carnegie very early in life developed the same characteristics. He never made hasty and ill-digested suggestions and then left them to others to carry out. When young Carnegie, just turned into his twenties, became private secretary to Thomas A. Scott, he was getting along as well, I thank you, as could be expected. And nobody was more delighted than Andy's mother--not even Andy himself. And most of Andy's joy in his promotions came from the pleasure which his mother found in his advancement. * * * * * When Thomas A. Scott became President of the Pennsylvania Railroad, Andrew Carnegie became Superintendent of the Pittsburgh Division, as a matter of course. His salary was fifteen hundred dollars a year. And this was the topmost turret of the tower: it was as far as the ambition of either the mother or the young man could fly. But the end was not yet. Thomas Alexander Scott was born at the forgotten hamlet of London, Franklin County, Pennsylvania. London, Pennsylvania, did not flourish as its founders had expected. Behold the folly of giving big names to little things. Caesar Augustus Jones used to be the town fool of East Aurora, until he was crowded to the wall by Oliver Cromwell Robinson. Scott walked out of his native village--a lad of ten who warmed his feet on October mornings where the cows had lain down. Later he came back and bought the county. Scott was a graduate of the University of Hard Knocks, and he also took several post-graduate courses. He received knocks all his life--and gave them. His parents had come from bonny Scotland, and it was a joke along the whole line of the Pennsylvania Railroad that a man with red hair and a hot-mush brogue could always get a job by shouting "Hoot, mon!" at "Tomscot." Scott loved Andy as well, probably, as he ever loved any one outside of his own family. He loved him because he was Scotch, and he loved him because he rounded up every task he attempted. He loved him because he smiled at difficulty; and he loved him because he never talked back and said, "We never did it that way before." In Eighteen Hundred Sixty-one, President Lincoln made Simon Cameron, of Pennsylvania, Secretary of War. Cameron was awfully Scotch, although I believe he was accidentally born in America. Cameron in time made Thomas A. Scott Assistant Secretary of War. And Thomas A. Scott made Andrew Carnegie Superintendent of United States Railways and Telegraphs. Lincoln once said that it was the most difficult and exacting position in the whole government service. The bent of the minds of both Scott and Carnegie was towards construction and peace. They were builders, financiers and diplomats. They accepted government position as a duty and they did their work nobly and well. But if these men had had their way there would have been no war. They would have bought the slaves and paid for them, and at a price which we have paid out for pensions and interest on the war debt every year since. They would have organized the South on an industrial basis and made it blossom like the rose, instead of stripping it and starving it into a dogged submission. The lessons Carnegie learned in war-time burned deep into his soul, and helped to make him as he is today, the foremost exponent of international disarmament in the world. The game of finance Carnegie learned from Scott, his foster-father. When but a salaried clerk Carnegie was once called into Scott's office. "Andy, I know where you can buy ten shares of Adams' Express stock--you had better get it!" "But I have no money," said Andy. "Then go out and borrow some!" And Andy did, the mother mortgaging their little home to raise the money--she never failed her Andy. He bought the stock at par. It was worth a third more, and paid dividends "every few minutes," to use the phrase of Scott. There is a suspicion that Scott threw this little block of stock in the way of Andy on purpose. It was an object-lesson in finance. Scott taught by indirection and did good by stealth. When Carnegie helped to organize the Woodruff Sleeping-Car Company, which later was absorbed by the Pullman Company, he was well out on the highway to fortune. Next came investments in oil-lands, and Andrew Carnegie, twenty-seven years of age, sold his oil interests for a decently few hundred thousand dollars. At this time all the bridges on the Pennsylvania Railroad were made of wood. It was a wooded country, and the natural thing was to use the material at hand. But there were fires, accidents, washouts, and the prophetic vision of Andrew Carnegie foresaw a time when all railroad-bridges would be made of iron. He organized the Keystone Bridge Works, and took a contract to build a railroad-bridge across the Ohio River. The work was a success, and practically the Keystone Bridge Works was without a competitor in America. But America was buying most of her iron in Birmingham. In Eighteen Hundred Sixty-eight, Andrew Carnegie made a trip to Europe, taking his mother with him. He was then thirty-one years old and a man of recognized worth and power. The pride of the mother in her son was modest yet profound, and his regard for her judgment, even in bridge-building and railroad affairs, was sincere and earnest. Besides, she was a good listener, and by explaining his plans to his mother, Andy got them straight in his own mind. The trip to Europe was for the double purpose of seeing whether old Dunfermline was really the delightful spot that memory pictured, and of getting the latest points in bridge-building and iron-making. Timber was scarce in England, and iron bridges and iron boats were coming as an actual necessity. Sir Henry Bessemer had invented his process of blowing a blast of cold air through the molten metal and thus converting iron into steel. The plan was simple, easy and effective. The distinguishing feature of Andrew Carnegie's mind has always been his ability to put salt on the tail of an idea. He came back from England with the Bessemer process well outlined in his square red head. Others had put the invention through the experimental stage--he waited. That shows your good railroadman. Let your inventors invent--most of their inventions are worthless--when the thing is right we will take it on. The Carnegie fortune owes its secret to the Bessemer steel rail. The fishplate instead of the frog, and the steel rail in place of the good old snakehead! "The song of the rail" died out to a low continuous hum when Carnegie began making steel rails and showed the section-hands how to bolt them together as one. Andrew Carnegie was a practical railroadman. He knew the buyers of supplies and he knew how to convince them that they needed his product. Manufacturing is a matter of formula, but salesmanship is genius. Moreover, to get the money to equip great factories is genius, and up to the Nineties the Carnegie Mills were immense borrowers of capital. Our socialistic friends sometimes criticize Andrew Carnegie for making the vast amount of money that he has. We can't swear a halibi for him, and so my excuse for the man is this: He never knew it was loaded--it was largely accidental. In truth he couldn't help making the money. Fate forced it on him. He has played this game of business for all there was in him. And he has played it according to the rules. Carnegie has never been a speculator. He is no gambler. He never bought a share of stock on margin in his life. The only thing he has ever bet on has been his ability to execute. He has been a creator and a builder. That his efforts should have brought him this tremendous harvest of dolodocci is a surprise to him. He knew there would be a return, but the size of the return no living man was able to foresee or foretell. Andrew Carnegie has acted on the times, and the times have acted on him. He is a product--a child, if you please--of Opportunity and Divine Energy. * * * * * When James Anderson, of Allegheny, Pennsylvania, stagecoach boss and ironmaster, about the year Eighteen Hundred Fifty threw open his library to the public, he did a great thing. Anderson owned four or five hundred books. Any one who wanted to read these books was welcome to do so. Especially were the boys made welcome. Anderson did not know what a portentous thing he was doing--nobody does when he does a big thing. Actions bear fruit--sometimes. And into Anderson's library, one Sunday afternoon, walked a diffident, wee Scotch laddie, who worked in a boiler-room all the week. "Where would you like to begin?" asked Mr. Anderson, kindly. And the boy answered, as another boy by the name of Thomas A. Edison answered on a like occasion, "If you please, I'll begin here." And he pointed to the end of a shelf. And he read through that library, a shelf at a time. He got the library habit. Andrew Carnegie has given away two thousand libraries. The first library built by Mr. Carnegie was in Eighteen Hundred Eighty-seven, at Braddock, Pennsylvania. This was for the benefit, primarily, of the employees of the Carnegie Steel Works. In Eighteen Hundred Eighty-nine, it was suggested that the city of Allegheny was in need of a library, quite as much as was Braddock. Mr. Carnegie proposed to build a library, art-gallery and music-hall combined, at a cost of three hundred thousand dollars, provided the city would supply the site, and agree to raise fifteen thousand dollars a year for maintenance. The offer was accepted and the building built, but at a cost of nearly one hundred thousand dollars more than was expected. Yet Mr. Carnegie did not complain. To show that his heart was with the venture, he also presented a ten-thousand-dollar organ for the hall. It was a first attempt, but the "North Side Library" is a model of beauty and convenience today. The way in which the people of Allegheny awakened, responded and availed themselves o