Famous Givers and Their Gifts

"It is a proud day for a man when he pays his last note, but not to be named in comparison with the day in which he makes his first one, and gets a banker to take it. I have tried both, and I know. The cars paid the subsequent payments from their earnings. I paid my first note from my savings, so much per month; and thus did I get my foot on fortune's ladder. It is easy to climb after that. A triumphant success was scored. And thus came sleeping-cars into the world. 'Blessed be the man who invented sleep,' says Sancho Panza. Thousands upon thousands will echo the sentiment, 'Blessed be the man who invented sleeping-cars.' Let me record his name, and testify my gratitude to him, my dear, quiet, modest, truthful, farmer-looking friend, T. T. Woodruff, one of the benefactors of the age."

Mr. Pullman later engaged in sleeping-car building, and Carnegie advised his firm "to capture Mr. Pullman." "There was a capture," says Mr. Carnegie, "but it did not quite take that form. They found themselves swallowed by this ogre, and Pullman monopolized everything."

While a very young man, Carnegie was appointed superintendent of the Western Division of the Pennsylvania Railroad. As superintendent he became the friend of Colonel Scott; and, together with some others, they bought several farms along the line of the road, which proved very valuable oil-lands. Mr. Carnegie says of the Storey Farm, Oil Creek, "We purchased the farm for $40,000; and so small was our faith in the ability of the earth to yield for any considerable time the hundred barrels per day which the property was then producing, that we decided to make a pond capable of holding one hundred thousand barrels of oil, which we estimated would be worth, when the supply ceased, $1,000,000. Unfortunately for us the pond leaked fearfully, evaporation also caused much loss; but we continued to run oil in to make the losses good day after day, until several hundred thousand barrels had gone in this fashion.

"Our experience with the farm may be worth reciting. Its value rose to $5,000,000; that is, the shares of the company sold in the market upon this basis; and one year it paid in cash dividends $1,000,000 – rather a good return upon an investment of $40,000. So great was the yield in the district that in two years oil became almost valueless, often selling as low as thirty cents per barrel, and not infrequently it was suffered to run to waste as utterly worthless.

"But as new uses were found for the oil, prices rose again; and to remove the difficulty of high freights, pipes were laid, first for short distances, and then to the seaboard, a distance of about three hundred miles. Through these pipes, of which six thousand two hundred miles have been laid, the oil is now pumped from two thousand one hundred wells. It costs only ten cents to pump a barrel of oil to the Atlantic. The value of petroleum and its products exported up to January, 1884, exceeds in value $625,000,000."

Within ten years from the time when Mr. Carnegie and his friends bought the oil-farms, their investment had returned them four hundred and one per cent, and the young Scotchman could count himself a rich man. Before this, however, he had entered the iron and steel industry, in which his great wealth has been made. With a little money which he had saved, he borrowed $1,250 from a bank, and, with five other persons, established the Keystone Bridge Works of Pittsburg, with the small capital of $6,000. This was a success from the first, and in latter years has had a capital of $1,000,000. It has built bridges all over the country, and structural frames for many public buildings in New York, Chicago, and other cities. From this time forward Mr. Carnegie's career has been a most successful one. He has become chief owner in the Union Iron Works, the Edgar Thomson Steel Works, the Homestead Steel Works, formerly a rival company, the Duquesne Works of the Allegheny Bessemer Steel Company, and several other iron and coke companies. The capital of these companies is about $30,000,000, and about twenty-five thousand men are employed.

"In 189 °Carnegie Bros. & Co., Limited," says the Engineering and Mining Journal for July 4, 1891, "had a capacity to produce 600,000 tons of steel rails per annum, or over twenty-five per cent of the total capacity of all the rolling-mills of the United States, while its products of steel girders, plates, nails, and other forms of manufactured iron and steel are greater than at any other works in this country, and exceed the amount turned out at the famous Krupp Works in Germany." The company has supplied the United States Government with a large amount of armor plates for our new ships, and also filled a large order for the Russian Government.

The Edgar Thomson Steel Works have an annual capacity of 1,000,000 gross tons of ingots, 600,000 gross tons of rails and billets, and 50,000 gross tons of castings. The Duquesne Furnaces have a yearly capacity of 700,000 gross tons of pig-iron; the Lucy Furnaces, 200,000 gross tons yearly; the Duquesne Steel Works, an annual capacity of 450,000 gross tons of ingots. The Homestead Steel Works have an annual capacity of 375,000 gross tons of Bessemer steel and ingots, and 400,000 gross tons of open-hearth steel ingots. The Upper Union Mills have an annual output of 140,000 gross tons of steel bars and steel universal mill-plates, etc.; the Lower Union Mills, an annual capacity of 65,000 gross tons of mill-plates, bridge-work, car-forgings, etc.

The industrious, ambitious boy was not satisfied merely to amass wealth. He had always been a great reader and thinker. In 1883 Charles Scribner's Sons published a book by this successful telegraph operator and iron manufacturer, "An American Four-in-Hand in Britain." The trip was suggested by Mr. Black's novel, "The Strange Adventures of a Phaeton," and extended from Brighton to Inverness, a distance of eight hundred and thirty-one miles.

Mr. Carnegie and his party of chosen friends made the journey by coach in seven weeks, from July 17 to Aug. 3, 1881, and had a most enjoyable as well as instructive trip. The Critic gives Mr. Carnegie well-merited praise, saying that "he has produced a book of travel as fresh as though he had been exploring Thibet or navigating the River of Golden Sand." The book is dedicated to "My favorite heroine, my mother," who was the queen dowager of the volume, and whose happiness during the journey seemed to be the chief concern of her devoted son.

This book had so cordial a reception that the following year, 1884, another volume was published, "Round the World," covering a trip made in 1878-1879; Mr. Carnegie having sailed from San Francisco to Japan, and thence through the lands of the East. As he starts, his mother puts in his hand Shakespeare in thirteen small volumes; and these are his company and delight in the long ocean voyage. Through China, India, and other countries, he observes closely, learns much, and tells it in a way that is always interesting. "Life at the East," he says, "lacks two of its most important elements, – the want of intelligent and refined women as the companion of man, and a Sunday. It has been a strange experience to me to be for several months without the society of some of this class of women, – sometimes many weeks without even speaking to one, and often a whole week without even seeing the face of an educated woman. And, bachelor as I am, let me confess what a miserable, dark, dreary, and insipid life this would be without their constant companionship."

Ten years later, in 1886, Mr. Carnegie published a book that had a very wide reading, and at once placed the author prominently before the New World and the Old World as well, "Triumphant Democracy, or Fifty Years' March of the Republic."

The book showed extensive research, a deep love for his adopted country, America, a warm heart, and an able mind. He wrote: "To the beloved Republic, under whose equal laws I am made the peer of any man, although denied political equality by my native land, I dedicate this book, with an intensity of gratitude and admiration which the native-born citizen can neither feel nor understand."

No one can read this book without being amazed at the power and possibilities of the Republic, and without a deeper love for, and pride in the greatness and true worth of, his country. The style is bright and attractive, and the facts stated remarkable. Americans must always be debtors to the Scotchman who has shown them how to prize their native land.

Mr. Carnegie wrote the book "as a labor of love," to show the people of the Old World the advantages of a republic over a monarchical form of government, and to Americans, "a juster estimate than prevails in some quarters of the political and social advantages which they so abundantly possess over the people of the older and less advanced lands, that they may be still prouder and even more devoted, if possible, to their institutions than they are."

Mr. Carnegie shows by undisputed facts that America, so recently a colony of Great Britain, has now become "the wealthiest nation in the world," "the greatest agricultural nation," "the greatest manufacturing nation," "the greatest mining nation in the world." "In the ten years from 1870 to 1880," says Mr. Carnegie, "eleven and a half millions were added to the population of America. Yet these only added three persons to each square mile of territory; and should America continue to double her population every thirty years, instead of every twenty-five years as hitherto, seventy years must elapse before she will attain the density of Europe. The population will then reach two hundred and ninety millions."

Mr. Carnegie has said in his "Imperial Federation," published in the Nineteenth Century, September, 1891, "Even if the United States increase is to be much less rapid than it has been hitherto, yet the child is born who will see more than 400,000,000 under her sway. No possible increase of the race can be looked for in all the world combined comparable to this. Green truly says that its 'future home is to be found along the banks of the Hudson and the Mississippi.'"

It will surprise many to know that "the whole United Kingdom (England, Scotland, and Ireland) could be planted in Texas, and leave plenty of room around it."

"The farms of America equal the entire territory of the United Kingdom, France, Belgium, Germany, Austria, Hungary, and Portugal. The corn-fields equal the extent of England, Scotland, and Belgium; while the grain-fields generally would overlap Spain. The cotton-fields cover an area larger than Holland, and twice as large as Belgium."

The growth of manufactures in America is amazing. In thirty years, from 1850 to 1880, Mr. Carnegie says there was an increase of nearly six hundred per cent, while the increase in British manufactures was little more than a hundred per cent. The total in America in 1880 was $5,560,000,000; in the United Kingdom, $4,055,000,000.

"Probably the most rapid development of an industry that the world has ever seen," says Mr. Carnegie, "is that of Bessemer steel in America." In 1870 America made 40,000 tons of Bessemer; in 1885, fifteen years later, she made 1,373,513 tons, which was 74,000 tons more than Great Britain made. "This is advancing not by leaps and bounds, it is one grand rush – a rush without pause, which has made America the greatest manufacturer of Bessemer steel in the world… One is startled to find that more yards of carpet are manufactured in and around the city of Philadelphia alone than in the whole of Great Britain. It is not twenty years since the American imported his carpets, and now he makes more at one point than the greatest European manufacturing nation does in all its territory."

Of the manufacture of boots and shoes by machinery, Mr. Carnegie says, "A man can make three hundred pairs of boots in a day, and a single factory in Massachusetts turns out as many pairs yearly as thirty-two thousand bootmakers in Paris… Twenty-five years ago the American conceived the idea of making watches by machinery upon a gigantic scale. The principal establishment made only five watches per day as late as 1854. Now thirteen hundred per day is the daily task, and six thousand watches per month are sent to the London agency."

The progress in mining has been equally remarkable. "To the world's stock of gold," says Mr. Carnegie, "America has contributed, according to Mulhall, more than fifty per cent. In 1880 he estimated the amount of gold in the world at 10,355 tons, worth $7,240,000,000. Of this the New World contributed 5,302 tons, or more than half. One of the most remarkable veins of metal known is the Comstock Lode in Nevada… In fourteen years this single vein yielded $180,000,000. In one year, 1876, the product of the lode was $18,000,000 in gold, and $20,500,000 in silver, – a total of $38,500,000. Here, again, is something which the world never saw before.

"America also leads the world in copper, the United States and Chili contributing nearly one-half the world's supply… On the south shore of Lake Superior this metal is found almost pure, in masses of all sizes, up to many tons in weight. It was used by the native Indians, and traces of their rude mining operations are still visible."

Mr. Carnegie says the anthracite coal-fields of Pennsylvania will produce 30,000,000 tons per year for four hundred and thirty-nine years; and he thinks by that time "men will probably be burning the hydrogen of water, or be fully utilizing the solar rays or the tidal energy." The coal area of the United States comprises 300,000 square miles; and Mr. Carnegie "is almost ashamed to confess it, she has three-quarters of all the coal area of the earth."

While Mr. Carnegie admires and loves the Republic, he is devoted to the mother country, and is a most earnest advocate of peace between us. He writes: "Of all the desirable political changes which it seems to me possible for this generation to effect, I consider it by far the most important for the welfare of the race, that every civilized nation should be pledged, as the Republic is, to offer peaceful arbitration to its opponent before the senseless, inhuman work of human slaughter begins."

In his "Imperial Federation" he writes: "War between members of our race may be said to be already banished; for English-speaking men will never again be called upon to destroy each other… Both parties in America, and each successive government, are pledged to offer peaceful arbitration for the adjustment of all international difficulties, – a position which it is to be hoped will soon be reached by Britain, at least in regard to all the differences with members of the same race.

"Is it too much to hope that, after this stage has been reached, and occupied successfully for a period, another step forward will be taken, and that, having jointly banished war between themselves, a general council should be evolved by the English-speaking nations, to which may at first only be referred all questions of dispute between them?..

"The Supreme Court of the United States is extolled by the statesmen of all parties in Britain, and has just received the compliment of being copied in the plan for the Australian Commonwealth. Building upon it, may we not expect that a still higher Supreme Court is one day to come, which shall judge between the nations of the entire English-speaking race, as the Supreme Court at Washington already judges between States which contain the majority of the race?"

Mr. Carnegie believes that the powers of the council would increase till the commanding position of the English-speaking race would make other races listen to its demands for peace, and so war be forever done away with. Mr. Carnegie rightly calls war "international murder," and, like Tennyson, looks forward to that blessed time when —

"All men's good
Be each man's rule, and universal Peace
Lie like a shaft of light across the land,
And like a lane of beams athwart the sea."

Mr. Carnegie has also written, in the North American Review for June, 1891, "The A. B. C. of Money," urging the Republic to keep "its standard in the future, as in the past, not fluctuating silver, but unchanging gold."

In his articles in the newspapers, and in his public addresses, he has given good advice to young men, in whom he takes the deepest interest. He believes there never were so many opportunities to succeed as now for the sober, frugal, energetic young man. "Real ability, the capacity for doing things, never was so eagerly searched for as now, and never commanded such rewards… The great dry-goods houses that interest their most capable men in the profits of each department succeed, when those fail that endeavor to work with salaried men only. Even in the management of our great hotels it is found wise to take into partnership the principal men. In every branch of business this law is at work; and concerns are prosperous, generally speaking, just in proportion as they succeed in interesting in the profits a larger and larger proportion of their ablest workers. Co-operation in this form is fast coming in all great establishments." To young men he says, "Never enter a barroom… It is low and common to enter a barroom, unworthy of any self-respecting man, and sure to fasten upon you a taint which will operate to your disadvantage in life, whether you ever become a drunkard or not."

"Don't smoke… The use of tobacco requires young men to withdraw themselves from the society of women to indulge the habit. I think the absence of women from any assembly tends to lower the tone of that assembly. The habit of smoking tends to carry young men into the society of men whom it is not desirable that they should choose as their intimate associates. The practice of chewing tobacco was once common. Now it is considered offensive. I believe the race is soon to take another step forward, and that the coming man is to consider smoking as offensive as chewing was formerly considered."

"Never speculate. Never buy or sell grain or stocks upon a margin… The man who gambles upon the exchanges is in the condition of the man who gambles at the gaming-table. He rarely, if ever, makes a permanent success."

"Don't indorse… There are emergencies, no doubt, in which men should help their friends; but there is a rule that will keep one safe. No man should place his name upon the obligation of another if he has not sufficient to pay it without detriment to his own business. It is dishonest to do so."

Mr. Carnegie has not only written books and made money, he has distinguished himself as a giver of millions, and that while he is alive. He has seen too many wills broken, and fortunes misapplied, when the money was not given away till death. He says of Mr. Tilden's bequest of over $5,000,000 for a free library in the city of New York: "How much better if Mr. Tilden had devoted the last years of his own life to the proper administration of this immense sum; in which case neither legal contest nor any other cause of delay could have interfered with his aims."

Of course money is sometimes so tied up in business that it cannot be given during a man's life; "yet," says Mr. Carnegie, "the day is not far distant when the man who dies leaving behind him millions of available wealth, which was free for him to administer during life, will pass away 'unwept, unhonored, and unsung,' no matter to what uses he leaves the dross which he cannot take with him. Of such as these the public verdict will then be, 'The man who dies thus rich dies disgraced.'"

He believes large estates left at death should be taxed by the State, as is the case in Pennsylvania and some other States. Mr. Carnegie does not favor large gifts left to families. "Why should men leave great fortunes to their children?" he asks. "If this is done from affection, is it not misguided affection? Observation teaches that, generally speaking, it is not well for the children that they should be so burdened. Neither is it well for the State. Beyond providing for the wife and daughters moderate sources of income, and very moderate allowances indeed, if any, for the sons, men may well hesitate; for it is no longer questionable that great sums bequeathed often work more for the injury than for the good of the recipients. There are instances of millionnaires' sons unspoiled by wealth, who, being rich, still perform great services to the community. Such are the very salt of the earth, as valuable as unfortunately they are rare." Again Mr. Carnegie says of wealth left to the young, "It deadens their energies, destroys their ambition, tempts them to destruction, and renders it almost impossible that they should lead lives creditable to themselves or valuable to the State. Such as are not deadened by wealth deserve double credit, for they have double temptation."

In the North American Review for December, 1889, Mr. Carnegie suggests what he considers seven of the best uses for surplus wealth: The founding of great universities; free libraries; hospitals or any means to alleviate human suffering; public parks and flower-gardens for the people, conservatories such as Mr. Phipps has given to the park at Allegheny City, which are visited by thousands; suitable halls for lectures, elevating music, and other gatherings, free, or rented for a small sum; free swimming-baths for the people; attractive places of worship, especially in poor localities. Mr. Carnegie's own great gifts have been largely along the line which he believes the "best gift to a community," – a free public library. He thinks with John Bright that "it is impossible for any man to bestow a greater benefit upon a young man than to give him access to books in a free library."

"It is, no doubt," he says, "possible that my own personal experience may have led me to value a free library beyond all other forms of beneficence. When I was a working-boy in Pittsburg, Colonel Anderson of Allegheny – a name I can never speak without feelings of devotional gratitude – opened his little library of four hundred books to boys. Every Saturday afternoon he was in attendance at his house to exchange books. No one but he who has felt it can ever know the intense longing with which the arrival of Saturday was awaited that a new book might be had. My brother and Mr. Phipps, who have been my principal business partners through life, shared with me Colonel Anderson's precious generosity; and it was when revelling in the treasures which he opened to us that I resolved, if ever wealth came to me, that it should be used to establish free libraries, that other poor boys might receive opportunities similar to those for which we were indebted to that noble man."

"How far that little candle throws his beams!
So shines a good deed in a naughty world."

Again Mr. Carnegie says, "I also come by heredity to my preference for free libraries. The newspaper of my native town recently published a history of the free library in Dunfermline, and it is there recorded that the first books gathered together and opened to the public were the small collections of three weavers. Imagine the feelings with which I read that one of these three men was my honored father. He founded the first library in Dunfermline, his native town; and his son was privileged to found the last… I have never heard of a lineage for which I would exchange that of the library-founding weaver."

Mr. Carnegie has given for the Edinburgh Free Library, Scotland, $250,000; for one in his native town of Dunfermline, $90,000; and several thousand dollars each to libraries in Aberdeen, Peterhead, Inverness, Ayr, Elgin, Wick and Kirkwall, besides contributions towards public halls and reading-rooms at Newburgh, Aberdour, and many other places abroad. Mr. Carnegie's mother laid the corner-stone for the free library in Dunfermline. He writes in his "American Four-in-Hand in Britain," "There was something of the fairy-tale in the fact that she had left her native town, poor, thirty odd years before, with her loved ones, to found a new home in the great Republic, and was to-day returning in her coach, to be allowed the privilege of linking her name with the annals of her beloved native town in one of the most enduring forms possible."

When the corner-stone of the Peterhead Free Library in Scotland was laid, Aug. 8, 1891, the wife of Mr. Carnegie was asked to lay the stone with square and trowel, and endeared herself to the people by her hearty interest and attractive womanhood. She was presented with the silver trowel with ivory handle which she had used, and with a vase of Peterhead granite from the employees of the Great North of Scotland Granite Works.

Mr. Carnegie did not marry till he was fifty-two years of age, in 1887, the year following the death of his mother and only brother Thomas. The latter died Oct. 19, 1886. Mr. Carnegie's wife, who is thoroughly in sympathy with her husband's constant giving, was Miss Louise Whitfield, the daughter of the late Mr. John Whitfield of New York, of the large importing firm of Whitfield, Powers, & Co. Mr. Carnegie had been an intimate friend of the family for many years, and knew well the admirable qualities and cultivation of the lady he married. He once wrote: "There is no improving companionship for man in an ignorant or frivolous woman." Miss Whitfield acted upon the advice which Mr. Carnegie has given in some of his addresses: "To the young ladies I say, 'Marry the man who loves most his mother.'" Mr. Carnegie now has two homes, one in New York City, the other at Cluny Castle, Kingussie, Scotland. He gives little personal attention to business, having delegated those matters to others. "I throw the responsibility upon others," he once said, "and allow them full swing." Mr. Carnegie is a man of great energy, with cheerful temperament, sound judgment, earnestness, and force of character. He has a large, well-shaped head, high forehead, brown hair and beard, and expressive face.

Mr. Carnegie's gifts in his adopted country have been many and large. To the Johnstown Free Library, Pennsylvania, he has given $40,000. To the Jefferson County Library at Fairfield, Iowa, he has given $40,000, which provides an attractive building for books, museum, and lecture-hall. The late Senator James F. Wilson gave the ground for the fire-proof building. The library owes much of its success to its librarian, Mr. A. T. Wells, who has given his life to the work, having held the position for thirty-two years. For many years he labored without salary, giving both time and money.

To the Braddock Free Library, Mr. Carnegie has given $200,000. Braddock, ten miles east of Pittsburg, has a population of 16,000, mainly the employees of the Edgar Thomson Steel Works; and the village of Homestead lies just opposite. The handsome library building has a very attractive reading-room, which is filled in the evening and much used during the day by the families of the employees. There is also a large reading-room exclusively for boys and girls, where are found juvenile books and periodicals. The librarian, Miss Helen Sperry, writes: "There is a great deal of local pride in the library, and it grows constantly in the affection of the people."