Carnegie (11 page)

I think that when, in making a speech, one feels himself lifted as it were, and swept by enthusiasm into the expression of some burning truth, he feels words whose eloquence surprises himself, he throws it forth, and, panting for breath, hears the roar of his fellow men in thunder of assent, the precious moment which tells him that the audience is his own, but one soul in it and that his; I think this the supreme moment of life.
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Although Morrison had opposed the Carnegie emigration, he now accepted his nephew’s success with pride.

Carnegie had intended that his trip to Dunfermline would be followed by several weeks touring Britain, France and Germany. Alas, he fell ill at Dunfermline; still debilitated by the episode of sunstroke in America, his wanderings around damp south-west Fife brought on a severe chill which led to coryza and an unresolved pneumonia. He was cared for during a period of six weeks at his Uncle George’s flat above the grocer’s shop in the High Street. He noted, ‘Scottish medicine was as stern as Scottish theology . . . and I was bled.’
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Following the blood-letting his condition worsened, putting his Dunfermline family in a panic. At the physician’s suggestion, rented accommodation was taken at nearby Loch Leven in Kinross, where a slow recovery was made. Eventually Carnegie felt well enough to visit some sights in Edinburgh and Glasgow before returning to America.

Recuperating after the tiresome sea voyage to the United States in the autumn of 1862, Carnegie prepared himself to return to work. The weeks at sea had given him time to reflect on his Dunfermline trip and on his future. Carnegie was 28 years old and had an earned and unearned income that was remarkable for the time. For instance, a statement found in his papers for 1863 showed an income of $47,860.67.
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His investments in transport, iron bridges and various stocks made a substantial foundation for his future wealth. He now made a review of his work practices. After his hard work as a boy, Carnegie planned to devote half his time to play. He saw his future role as an ideas man; he would supply the inspiration and driving energy for projects, but would employ others to supply the drudgery of putting ideas to work. He believed that the future secret of his success would be found in his Scottish upbringing and ‘genes’. There was one mistake though, that he was determined not to make, and this he set down in a letter to his cousin Dod: ‘Isn’t it strange how little ambition most of our Scottish acquaintances have to become independent
and then enjoy the luxuries which wealth can (and should) procure
?’
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He also gave Dod an insight into his future plans:

For my part, I am determined to expand as my means do and ultimately to own a noble place in the country, cultivate the rarest flowers, the best breeds of cattle, own a magnificent lot of horses and be distinguished for taking the deepest interest in all those about my place. The position most to be envied, outside the ring of great men, I think is that of a British gentleman who labours diligently to educate and improve the condition of his dependents and who takes an independent part in National politics, always labouring to correct some ancient abuse – to curtail the privileges of the few and increase those of the many.
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Carnegie returned to work in high spirits, but Pittsburgh was in a state of alarm. Union Army intelligence showed that the Confederate General Robert E. Lee was aiming to capture Pittsburgh. The city began to fortify and some 6,800 volunteers put the place in a state of readiness. Carnegie helped with the transportation of soldiers and goods by rail until he had satisfied the quotas set by Major-General Brooks, commander of the Monogahela region south of Pittsburgh. There was now to be enacted the best-known military engagement in American history. General Lee and his Army of Northern Virginia moved north to Gettysburg. Here over the three days of 1 July to 3 July 1863 battle raged. Lee’s army of 75,000 faced the 83,300 troops of the Union under Major-General George G. Meade. Finally Lee began to retreat on 4 July. His drive north had failed, and he told his men: ‘It is I who have lost this fight, and you must help me out of it the best way you can.’ Although Lee lost 28,100 men at Gettysburg (against 23,000 Union casualties), Meade did not follow up his victory with more slaughter, and the pressure was taken off Pittsburgh.

The Civil War had driven up the price of iron to more than $103 per ton, and it was now in short supply. Consequently the railway system was suffering from a lack of maintenance and repairs. Added to this there had been a run on locomotives, dozens of which had been destroyed in the conflict. Carnegie was to make a killing in both areas.

Carnegie decided to invest in the iron business to the tune of $10,000, and in 1864 formed with others the Superior Rail Mill and Blast Furnaces. In 1866, together with Thomas N. Miller, a colleague in the Sun City Forge Co., another of Carnegie’s interests, they set up the Pittsburgh Locomotive Works. Again Carnegie saw an opportunity to invest in track infrastructure, having observed how the traditional American wooden bridges were very vulnerable in war. Thus with bridge designer H.J. Linville, engineer John L. Piper and his partner Aaron Shiffler, he formed the Piper & Shiffler Company to build iron bridges. Carnegie involved Thomas A. Scott in the venture as co-founder, with each of the principals contributing $1,250; the company was merged into the Keystone Bridge Co. in 1863. A major contract was bridging the Ohio River at Steubenville, with a cast-iron bridge of 300ft span; this would be the first of many important contracts which gave rise to the Carnegie motto: ‘If you want a contract, be on the spot when it is let.’
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If he had not consciously realised it before, Carnegie had developed into a capitalist, a term that would have sent shock waves through his radical relatives’ nerves, and there was another socialist hate-word to add to Carnegie’s latest category of achievements, namely exploitation; in future years Carnegie detractors would castigate him for exploiting the war needs for his own ends. One day his old telegraph office friend Tom David called to see him. In conversation about how well he was doing Carnegie mimed exultation with his arms and exclaimed, ‘Oh! I’m rich, I’m rich.’ By this time he had personal capital deposits in the region of $50,000 and interests in more companies than any colleague realised. In terms of the old Scots proverb which Carnegie often recited, he was successful in ‘gathering gear’, ‘gear’ being the Scots term for possessions, money or property.
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The day after General Lee began his retreat from the disaster at Gettysburg, another key defeat loomed for the South. Vicksburg in Mississippi was one of the two remaining strongholds in Confederate hands (the other was Port Hudson, Louisiana). Of Vicksburg Abraham Lincoln said, ‘the war can never be brought to a close until that key is in our pocket.’ Vicksburg was also an important east–west railway junction. Some 77,000 Union troops under Major-General Ulysses S. Grant and Acting Rear Admiral David D. Porter were assembled at Vicksburg to face 62,000 Confederates under General Joseph K. Johnston and Lieutenant-General John J. Pemberton. After a 47-day siege of Vicksburg, the white flag was raised by the Confederates on 4 July 1863 and closure was brought to one of the most important chapters of the Civil War; as the Confederate General Stephen D. Lee remarked, Vicksburg was ‘a staggering blow from which the Confederacy never rallied’.

The summer of 1864 saw Union Major-General William T. Sherman embark his army on the Western & Atlantic Railroad bound for Atlanta. On 27 June he successfully defeated Confederate General Joseph E. Johnston’s Army of Tennessee at the battle of Kennesaw Mountain; within a few months he would raise the US flag over Atlanta. Further north Lieutenant-General Jubal A. Early was the only Confederate general to win a major battle north of the Potomac; he triumphed against Major-General Lewis Wallace at Monocacy, Maryland, on 9 July 1864. While these and other battles were raging, Carnegie received a shock.

His efforts to increase his wealth and his work for the US government had put from his mind the notion that he might be eligible for military service. When he received his letter to this effect, he was aghast. It was ridiculous: how could he be drafted? He was doing very important transportation and construction work for the war effort. All that he considered far more important than toting a rifle through the cornfields of Maryland, or chasing rebels across Tennessee. And what was more, had he not already shed blood for his new country? The telegraph wire incident? But his enquiries only emphasised his eligibility for draft.

According to the US Conscription Act of 1863 Carnegie could dodge the draft by paying a fee to the government, or by negotiating with another man to fill his draft position. To sort out the details for him he employed draft agent H.M. Butler, who supplied an Irish immigrant called John Lindew to take Carnegie’s place. The draft dodge cost Carnegie $850 in agent’s fees. In exchange he received a Certificate of Non-Liability valid until 19 July 1867.
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It was not an episode he would bring to public notice in his autobiographical writings.

More changes were in the wind for Carnegie. Rumours were circulating that he would soon be offered the post of Assistant General Superintendent, ranking just below Enoch Lewis. At 29, this would be his route to a vice-presidency of the Pennsylvania Railroad. Did he want to emulate his patron Thomas A. Scott? At length J. Edgar Thomson did offer Carnegie the position, and the dilemma had to be faced.

Carnegie had reached a crossroads. He decided he didn’t need promotion in the railroad as his investment dividends brought him more than his working salary and he had a notion of returning to Scotland, maybe to act as American Consul at Glasgow. Towards this end he asked Thomas A. Scott to mediate with Abraham Lincoln’s Secretary of State, Simon Cameron, to get him the job. Cameron did not oblige.
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Nevertheless, Carnegie was adamant he was getting out of railroads in order to follow his determination ‘to make a fortune’ – something he could not do ‘honestly’ in transportation.
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A little short of two weeks before General Lee surrendered the Confederate Army to General Grant at Appomattox Court House, Virginia, Carnegie sat down and wrote his letter of resignation:

PENNSYLVANIA RAILROAD COMPANY
SUPERINTENDENT’S OFFICE
PITTSBURGH, MARCH 28 1865

TO THE OFFICERS AND EMPLOYEES OF THE PITTSBURGH DIVISION
:

Gentlemen:

I cannot allow my connection with you to cease without some expression of the deep regret felt at parting.

Twelve years of pleasant intercourse have served to inspire feelings of personal regard for those who have so faithfully laboured with me in the service of the Company. The coming change is painful only as I reflect that in consequence thereof I am not to be in the future, as in the past, intimately associated with you and with many others in the various departments, who have through business intercourse, become my personal friends. I assure you although the official relations hitherto existing between us must soon close, I can never fail to feel and evince the liveliest interest in the welfare of such as have been identified with the Pittsburgh Division in times past, and who are, I trust, for many years to come to contribute to the success of the Pennsylvania Railroad Company, and share in its justly deserved prosperity.

Thanking you most sincerely for the uniform kindness shown toward me, for your zealous efforts made at all times to meet my wishes, and asking for my successor similar support at your hands, I bid you all farewell.
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Carnegie’s rather pompous letter was not the end of his railroad interests. His investments kept him a keen follower of the postwar railroads, bridge-building and telegraphic industries. What a step he had taken. The poor boy from Dunfermline, desperate for a job, had now jettisoned a position with greater prospects. Wealth had boosted Carnegie’s confidence and there was now greater chance of gallivanting.

No business man is worth his salt . . . who does not have his affairs so expertly organised that he cannot drop them at a moment’s notice and leave for parts unknown.

Burton J. Hendrick,
The Life of Andrew Carnegie
, vol. I, p. 138

C
arnegie was getting itchy feet again. For two years he had juggled his financial interests which had now mutated into two distinct balance sheet groupings. There were the businesses like the Keystone Bridge Co., the Pittsburgh Locomotive Works, the Superior Rail Mill and the Union Iron Mills, which demanded Carnegie’s direct attention and relevant intervention, and company interests like banks, insurance concerns, Adams Express, Columbian Oil and Woodruff Sleeping Cars that were run by others.

As Carnegie assessed his financial sheets, America jogged along after the shock assassination of Abraham Lincoln on 14 April 1865 at Ford’s Theatre, Washington, by actor John Wilkes Booth. His death removed the only man who could have reconciled North and South, and the country had a new president in Lincoln’s Vice-President Andrew Johnson (1808–75). As Johnson settled into his struggles with the radicals in his own party, Carnegie set out for Europe in May 1865, with share revenue flooding into his pockets.

Inspiration for the journey came from a book by American travel writer James Bayard Taylor entitled
Views Afoot: or, Europe Seen with Knapsack and Staff
(1846). But there was another underlying motive for Carnegie to undertake the five-month tour. He wanted to round off his ‘mind and character’ and achieve the ‘desirable expansion of his soul’ through travel.
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His arrangements for the voyage made, Carnegie left his interests principally in the hands of a quartet of trusted colleagues: Andrew Kloman, of the iron-working firm of Kloman & Co., who had brought Carnegie into the iron manufacturing business; John Piper of the bridge builders Piper & Shiffler Co., in which Carnegie had made a key investment; his old friend Tom Miller; and his much put-upon young brother Tom. This group of individuals underlined another of Carnegie’s secrets of success: put into roles of responsibility people who are more accomplished at the job than you are yourself.