Carnegie (22 page)

Thousands of readers pored over what Carnegie meant by his sentence: ‘The man who dies thus rich dies disgraced.’ How could it be wrong for people to leave money to support their families after their death? Carnegie’s postbag was full of letters in such vein. What he meant, he said, was that
misers
descending to the tomb wealthy were the disgraced ones. He further explained his stance in a letter:

When I wrote the article upon wealth, it is true that I had in mind chiefly the ‘Millionaire Class’; men like Vanderbilt, Stanford, the two Pratts, Mr Sage, patron of Cornell, and such men as had by close application and rare ability amassed large sums. Mr Astor dies, in my opinion, disgraced by leaving $150,000,000 to one person, while the Astor Library suffers for want of enough money to make purchases of modern books necessary to hold its position as a first-class library. . . . I think that a man forty years old, with $50,000 actively engaged in business, has not a surplus which can properly be devoted to public uses. Private cases of misfortune within his knowledge may, however, be to some extent relieved by him. At sixty, with $300,000 or $400,000, the case is changed. Men should retire from active business certainly, at or before sixty. After arranging his family expenditures, according to the dictates of his own conscience, he can consider that he has a surplus for which he is only the trustee.
²¹

Carnegie received thousands of requests for handouts and as the article circulated more widely the brickbats came. Some dubbed the article the ‘Gospel According to St Andrew’.
²²
A sticking point for many detractors was the fact that Carnegie appeared to disregard the issue of low wages in favour of charity handouts to public bodies. One vociferous detractor was Professor William Jewett Tucker, later President of Dartmouth College in Hanover, New Hampshire, which was founded in 1769 and developed as a liberal-arts educational foundation. Tucker scorned Carnegie’s basic assumption of the inevitability of great wealth accumulating around entrepreneurs, and disputed that such a magnate sitting on the top of a mountain of money was inevitably the ‘best administrator of its redistribution’. ‘I can conceive of no greater mistake,’ thundered Tucker, ‘than that of trying to make charity do the work of justice.’
²³
Carnegie’s article, as well as others past and future from such sources as the
Century Magazine
and
Scottish Leader
of the period 1886–99, appeared in book form as
The Gospel of Wealth
under the New York Century Company’s imprint in 1900.
²⁴

On the other hand Carnegie’s article is deemed to have encouraged people like John Davison Rockefeller, the oil magnate, to increase their financial philanthropy; Rockefeller had founded the Standard Oil Co. in 1870 and through it secured control of the US oil trade. Each of the wealthy philanthropists had his own favourite projects; both Rockefeller and J.P. Morgan had churches high on their lists, the former favouring the Baptist Church and the latter the Episcopal. At this time the core of Carnegie’s largesse was aimed at books and libraries.

During 1890 it came to Carnegie’s notice that Sir John Emmerich Edward Dalberg-Acton, 1st Baron Acton of Aldenham (1834–1902), a Roman Catholic Whig MP, lord-in-waiting to Queen Victoria in Gladstone’s fourth ministry and later Regius Professor of Modern History at Cambridge, had fallen on hard times. It was voiced in the press that Acton’s personal library of 80,000 volumes at his Shropshire home at Aldenham would have to be sold to pay off serious debts. Soon another press announcement reported that the library had been saved by a mystery benefactor. In fact, the rescue had been engineered by Gladstone with Carnegie’s help. The latter, however, for reasons he never revealed, told Gladstone that he wished to remain anonymous in the matter:

I wish no one to know this, not even my wife shall know. Lord Granville [Granville George Leveson-Gower, 2nd Earl of Granville, Gladstone’s Foreign Secretary and Liberal Leader in the Lords, and stepfather of Lord Acton] should understand that such an arrangement, if known, must make it somewhat uncomfortable for Lord Acton.
²⁵

The library was in effect sold to Carnegie for £10,000, with the Acton family retaining possession for the lifetime of Lord Acton. After Acton’s death in 1902 Carnegie passed the library to his friend John Morley as a gift to dispose of as he wished. In turn Morley gave the library to the University of Cambridge.

To further his aim of promoting medical research Carnegie was prompted to make a specific donation by his doctor, Frederick Dennis, who had set up a laboratory for the study of the causes and cure of diseases at Belleview Hospital, New York. Dr Dennis was particularly interested in the study of cholera; at that time the highly infectious disease was rampant in various European ports, and Dennis was anxious to make sure that America was safe from the deadly infections. This was exactly the type of charitable outlet that stirred Carnegie at the time and started him off on a new range of philanthropy.

Another important promotion of books occurred with the opening of the Carnegie Free Library in Allegheny City. Based on a donation of $250,000, the library was nine years in gestation, eventually housing some 75,000 books and a music hall with a $10,000 pipe organ. To Carnegie’s delight the formal opening was attended by President Benjamin Harrison, and the library was dedicated on 20 February 1890. As usual Carnegie gave a speech which would become a template for addresses wherever he opened a library in particular:

The poorest citizen, the poorest man, the poorest woman that toils from morn till night for a livelihood (as, thank heaven, I had to do in my early days), as he walks this hall, as he reads the books from these alcoves, he listens to the organ and admires the works of art in this gallery equally with the millionaires and the foremost citizen; I want him to exclaim in his own heart: ‘Behold all this is mine.’
²⁶

The build-up to the opening ceremony was marred by the last illness and death in January 1890 of Carnegie’s mother-in-law Mrs John Whitfield. Louise had cared for her for months and was deeply distressed at the death. Her deep mourning caused her to be absent from the library opening.

Years before, Carnegie had offered Pittsburgh a library, but the city fathers had rejected his generosity because they believed they had not sufficient civil funds to maintain it. Now, spurred on by the Allegheny City project, they asked Carnegie if his proffered $250,000 was still on the table. The negative reply caused dismay. Then in his idiosyncratic way Carnegie offered them $1 million instead. With its additional art gallery, meeting rooms, music facility and branch libraries, the Pittsburgh library was Carnegie’s latest public benefaction to date. As he did in business, Carnegie involved himself in every aspect of the project, from choosing paint to the style of the bookshelves.

These two library projects stirred up Carnegie’s detractors again, and not just those in the Democratic party. Carnegie’s steelworkers were particularly bitter; they had had their wages cut, and here was Carnegie lashing out thousands to fund a project that few of them wanted to use. Why could they not have fair wages to be able to buy things they wanted?

Carnegie was impervious to such carping. With President Harrison as his friend and colleague he was jubilant. He took Harrison on a visit to his steelworks before the president left Allegheny City and introduced him to his team of managers, including Charles Schwab, the young supervisor of the Homestead Mills, and Harrison saw something of Carnegie’s employment philosophy at work:

‘How is this, Mr Carnegie? You present only boys to me,’ remarked the President.
‘Yes, Mr President, but do you notice what kind of boys they are?’
‘Yes, hustlers [i.e. go-getters]. Every one of them.’
²⁷

Carnegie had made Schwab a chief engineer and manager by the time he was 20; now aged 28 he had a partnership in the business and would soon be a millionaire. Harrison observed one of Carnegie’s employment secrets:
INTELLIGENCE
+
ENERGY
+
FORESIGHT
+
ENTHUSIASM
=
REWARD
. And Carnegie was aiming at political rewards for himself. Harrison was somewhat embarrassed to receive from him a keg of whisky to introduce him to Scottish spirits, and his aides were concerned that he would be seen as too close to rapacious capitalists. Yet Harrison enjoyed himself at the sumptuous dinner Carnegie threw for him at the Arlington Hotel, Washington DC, following the library opening. Carnegie had long wished to be a prominent player on the Washington stage. His friendship with Harrison and Secretary of State James Blaine strengthened that; and when Blaine died in 1893, another Carnegie player – his lawyer and fishing companion George Shiras Jr – was appointed to the Supreme Court to help promote business and Carnegie. Before Blaine died, though, Carnegie was to receive his one and only political appointment.
²⁸

James Blaine was an internationalist with a particular interest in South America. He organised the first Pan-American Conference, gathering together delegates from North, South and Central America to debate commercial issues. Carnegie was one of America’s ten delegates, enjoying the role of envoys’ host at Pittsburgh when the party set out on a six-week tour of America’s manufacturing, commercial and agricultural locations.

Carnegie began to study South American history and politics. Under Spanish rule from the sixteenth century until 1810, when the first autonomous government was established, with full independence following in 1818, Chile suffered further revolution when rebels overthrew the government in 1891. Leading members of the deposed government were granted asylum in America and Carnegie boned up on Chilean current affairs. Diplomatically America became more involved when several naval men were murdered and others attacked after shore leave was granted to the men of the USS
Baltimore
stationed in Chilean waters.

Public indignation was high in America with calls for immediate gunboat retribution. Carnegie the neo-pacifist counselled President Harrison to tread softly, and careful diplomacy calmed the situation. From this time on, whenever America was involved in tension abroad, Carnegie’s personal intervention tactic cranked into action with the sending of memos, letters and telegrams and face-to-face confrontations with all concerned. Carnegie was happy; he felt that the government and president he had helped to buy were on his side, and just as he had exacted profit from his business activities he wished to do the same in politics. Nevertheless there were time bombs lurking in his immediate future which would indelibly harm his reputation.

Andrew Carnegie sweated the last dollar out of his workers and gave them little in return; his gifts to libraries and other institutions were stolen from the pockets of his labourers and he got all the credit.

Comment by one of Carnegie’s workers reminiscing about
the Homestead Troubles of 1892

T
here were certain contracts over the years that Carnegie did not bid for, notably in the field of armaments for the US Navy. Carnegie’s interest in the US Navy dated from the days of the Civil War, and the exploits of Captain David Glasgow Farragut (1801–70), a Southerner who fought for the North in the Federal Navy, and took part in the siege and capture of Vicksburgh (1863) and the destruction of Confederate vessels in Mobile Bay. Carnegie had a picture of Farragut in his Civil War portfolio and he was developing in his mind a plan to reward such heroes – a plan which would eventually evolve into his Hero Fund Trust in 1908. Nevertheless at this point his pacifism deterred him from dealing in the machines of war; that being said, he also realised that there was little money to be made from naval armaments.

However, in December 1889 the construction of the battleship
Maine
and the cruiser
New York
was delayed by difficulties in the supply of steel from Carnegie’s rival Joseph Wharton’s Bethlehem Steel Co. President Harrison’s Naval Secretary Benjamin Tracy contacted Carnegie to seek his help. Carnegie was tempted; an order for 6,000 tons of steel was big and lucrative. But what of his pacifism? Whether he realised it or not Tracy had managed to reach Carnegie’s weak spot: his vanity. His acceptance of the contract would please his Washington friends and advance his status. Thus Carnegie’s conceit mollified his principles, the contract was accepted and the management of the manufacture was given to Henry Clay Frick.

From wherever he was Carnegie monitored the contract’s progress, and even when he was at Cluny Castle the US Naval attaché W.H. Emery, based at the US embassy in London, kept him supplied with memos from James Blaine to help him keep within the US government’s guidelines for the contract. Thus Carnegie was able to telegraph instructions and advice to Frick. He even bought land in Pittsburgh on which to construct a mill for the contract production. The land purchase promoted its own difficulties but when taken to law Carnegie, Phipps & Co. won. After all, Carnegie was a skilled manipulator. And this was just the beginning. Carnegie was to win more orders for steel for armaments, with stockholder Cousin Dod acting as adviser. Carnegie’s detractors past and present cite these arms deals as fine examples of the ‘pacifist’ Carnegie’s ‘hypocrisy’. More charges of dissembling would pile up.

From the late 1870s many of America’s railroad and coal industries had been sorely troubled by labour difficulties, often in the form of serious riots. Carnegie’s Pittsburgh works had been largely trouble-free by comparison, and paths had been smoothed by his cooperation with unions. For instance, from the opening of his rail mill in 1875 he had dealt with worker representative groups like the ‘Sons of Vulcan’, which merged with the Amalgamated Association of Iron and Steel Workers in 1876.
¹
Carnegie’s diplomatic relationship with the unions helped him to acquire the trouble-hit mills of Homestead (acquired 1883) and Duquesne (annexed 1890) from their owners who lacked his man-management skills.