Carnegie (6 page)

It was a lonely job and involved too much responsibility for a boy of Andrew’s age. But he persisted: ‘My hopes were high, and I looked every day for some change to take place. What it was to be I knew not, but that it would come I felt certain if I kept on.’
⁸
He was right.

Andrew Carnegie believed that if knowledge was made available to each man, he would find a happy, useful place in the scheme of things.

Clara Ingram Judson (1879–1963), biographer

D
etermined not to give up on the hope that a new opportunity would present itself, Andrew Carnegie was soon to get his chance. He was approached by John Hay to write some letters, Hay being ‘a poor penman’. Thereafter Carnegie was employed to prepare the bills sent out to customers; this led, too, to dealing with current correspondence. The new work was not taxing and Carnegie fitted it in alongside an added duty of oiling textile spools, a job he found nauseous because of the smell of the oil, but he persisted.

As he proceeded with John Hay’s bookkeeping, Carnegie discovered that while the single-entry accounting system he was using was adequate, bigger firms utilised a double-entry format. So, along with his new friends William Cowley, Thomas Miller and John Phipps, he went to William’s accountancy evening class in double-entry at Pittsburgh during the winter of 1848/9. Another opportunity too was beckoning.

Returning home from work in the early spring of 1850, Carnegie learned from his uncle Thomas Hogan that his draughts-playing companion David Brooks, manager of the Henry O’Reilly Atlantic and Ohio Telegraph Co., was looking for a competent boy messenger for the telegraph office. Would Andrew like to be considered? A family council took place. His father was against the offer: he considered Andrew ‘too young and too small’ and feared that the late-night deliveries might take his son into the dangerous haunts of gamblers, whores and drunks. Eventually, though, William Carnegie was outvoted and Andrew Carnegie followed up the vacancy.
¹
So one sunny morning Carnegie, dressed in his best (and only) white linen shirt and blue Sunday-best suit and accompanied by his father as far as the office block, walked the 2 miles from Allegheny to Pittsburgh to the telegraph office at Fourth and Wood Street.
²
The interview was short and to the point. Andrew Carnegie got the job, for which he was to be paid $2.50 per week; he considered it ‘my first real start in life’.
³
In his delight in starting the job immediately, Andrew Carnegie almost forgot his father waiting outside; suddenly remembering him, he rapidly downed tools to run out and tell him all was well and that he could go home. The other staff in the office, when Carnegie was introduced to them by fellow telegraph boy George McLain, looked askance at the small stature of their new colleague. Would anyone so small be able to carry out the duties of messenger? They were doubtful. No one in the office ever realised how driven Andrew Carnegie was by the need to stave off poverty. He was determined never to sink back into the penury they had endured at Dunfermline.
⁴

Carnegie plunged into his new job with enthusiasm, his finely honed memory soaking up business names, company addresses and street locations of the telegraph company’s clients. He had told David Brooks at his interview for the job that he did not know Pittsburgh but within weeks he was even able to identify the managers, agents and important employees of the various firms by name, so that he might deliver messages personally and to the right person. This way he could be recognised by those who mattered. He derived great pride from his new company uniform of dark green jacket and knickerbockers, loose breeches gathered at the knee.
⁵

After the fire of 10 April 1845 the business area of Pittsburgh was devastated but the city’s streets, alleys and sidewalks still teemed with horses and wagons, and a multitude of hawkers, merchants and loafers all contributing to a public din Carnegie had never experienced in Dunfermline. Because of the fire the business premises were scattered but Carnegie soon knew every remaining building intimately, and more importantly he learned which people were the movers and shakers of the city. In particular he made himself known to prominent members of the Pittsburgh bar, such as judges Wilkins, MacCandless, McClure and Shaler; another such was Edwin McMasters Stanton (1814–69), who went on to become Secretary of War in Abraham Lincoln’s Republican administration of 1861–5. Carnegie began to whet his appetite for acquaintance with the ‘great’ and modelled himself on the Pittsburgh businessmen he met on his delivery rounds.
⁶

In his new position Andrew Carnegie began to forge new friendships. William Cowley, John Phipps and Thomas Miller were joined by James R. Wilson and James Smith, and together they enter the Carnegie story as ‘The Original Six’, all bent on bettering themselves.
⁷
Enjoying rambles together, exploring the environs of Pittsburgh, they regularly met by the White Horse Tavern – where the Pittsburgh borough council assembled – to argue and debate, much as grandfather Carnegie had done at the Pattiesmuir ‘college’ – although unlike grandfather Carnegie the teetotal six abstained from liquor. Andrew Carnegie’s fellow messenger on the eastern section of the telegraph company’s area was David McCargo, and the pair were later joined by Robert Pitcairn. Together they shared their duties of office-cleaning and pole-climbing to repair telegraph wires. The work was hard, but there were high spots too. The boys received tips of fruit and cakes from customers who purveyed such delicacies, but they also received cash tips of up to 10 cents a time for messages ‘delivered beyond a certain limit’.
⁸
The cash tips were a cause for friction among the messengers, especially if one recipient was suspected of taking such a job out of turn. So Andrew Carnegie suggested that all the tips should be pooled and divided up equally at the end of each week; the suggestion was agreed and Carnegie acted as treasurer of the fund. ‘It was my first essay in financial organisation,’ he later noted.
⁹

To his fellows, Andrew Carnegie appeared a bit of a prig and a prude; he tended to remove himself from a group telling dirty jokes, and hissily criticised anybody he thought was overindulging in food. As treasurer of the tips pool, he persuaded the local food shops not to extend credit to the messenger boys in anticipation of shared tips. His Scottish sense of morality also caused him to look down on those who smoked or devoured sweetmeats.
¹⁰

Andrew Carnegie savoured his busy employment, sometimes working until after 10pm, but regretted that he had little time and opportunity to advance himself intellectually. At present there was no spare cash for books. But his access to books was to receive a boost when Colonel James Anderson, founder of several free libraries in western Pennsylvania, decided to open his huge library of books to ‘working boys’ every Saturday. Did young white-collar employees come into this category of borrowers? Carnegie wrote a note to the
Pittsburgh Dispatch
to clarify the matter – ‘my first communication to the press’.
¹¹
Colonel Anderson’s librarian replied that the library rules meant ‘a Working Boy should have a trade’ to qualify as a free borrower. Carnegie took up his pen again to argue the point, signing himself ‘A Working Boy though without a Trade’. His determination encouraged Colonel Anderson to widen the catchment of library borrowers and Carnegie won plaudits from his special friends who were now exempt from the $2 borrowing fee. Thereafter Andrew Carnegie was never without a new book to hand from Anderson’s collection, be it his favourite, Charles Lamb’s
Essays of Elia
(1823), or Thomas Babington Macaulay’s
Essays
(1843), or the primer on his new homeland, George Bancroft’s ten volume
History of the United States
(1834).

While at the telegraph office Carnegie discovered an interest in the works of Shakespeare, by way of the old Pittsburgh Theatre on Fifth Avenue, then under the managership of Mr Foster. In exchange for a free telegraph delivery service for the theatre the telegraph messengers received complimentary tickets. The tragedian Edwin ‘Gust’ Adams put on a series of Shakespearean plays – and Andrew Carnegie was hooked.
Macbeth
, in particular, revived memories of his Dunfermline childhood, for King Duncan’s son Malcolm was the Malcolm III of Dunfermline Tower around which Carnegie had played.

During these early American years Dunfermline was not far from Andrew Carnegie’s thoughts. In a letter of 22 June 1851 he wrote to his cousin Dod about his posting as telegraph employee and remarked that one day he would return to his birthplace, ‘for I can easily manage to save as much money if I behave well.’
¹²
He kept up a regular correspondence with Dod and his uncle George Lauder, telling them about the family, his father’s linen weaving and his discoveries in American history and geography, and waxing lyrical on the construction of the American constitution which he considered a perfect model for aspiring nations. Although Carnegie was idiosyncratic in the subjects he chose to write about, the letters show a developing political and social consciousness. In a letter of 30 May 1852 to his uncle George Lauder he wrote:

I am sure it is far better for me that I came here. If I had been in Dunfermline working at the loom it’s very likely I would have been a poor weaver all my days, but here, I can surely do something better than that – if I don’t it will be my own fault, for any one can get along in this country. I intend going to night school this fall to learn something more and after that I will try to teach myself some other branches.
¹³

He showed an interest in the presidential election of 1852, in which President Millard Fillmore was not nominated by his Whig party to fill the role again. He wrote to his uncle:

You would laugh to see how low [the politicians] have to bow to their sovereigns [
sic
] the People. The 2 most prominent candidates I am sorry to say are warriors one [Maj] Gen [Winfield] Scott Comm-in-Chief USA. He is a Whig; the Whigs here go for Protection against foreign labor, are in favour of a National Bank & are conservative. The Democrats go for Free Trade and no Chartered Bank. I take great interest in politics here and think when I am a man I would like to dabble a little in them. I would be a democrat or rather a free-soil-Democrat, free soilers got that name from their hatred of Slavery and slave labor. Slavery I hope will soon be abolished in this Country . . . There is much excitement here upon the subject of Temperance. The State of Maine passed a law prohibiting the manufacture or sale except for medical purposes of all intoxicating liquors; several states have passed similar laws and of course the Rum sellers are trying all they can to protect their rights to sell what they please. That is a step in advance of [Britain] at any rate.
¹⁴

The election was won by New Hampshire lawyer Franklin Pierce, who dismayed Carnegie by enforcing the Fugitive Slave Act.

In Pittsburgh Carnegie was reunited with the Swedenborgians who had founded a society there. Aunt Anne Aitken was a keen Swedenborgian and Andrew Carnegie found an interest in music participation through the oratorios attached to their hymn book. His developing interest caused him to join the Swedenborgian choir under Mr Koethen, although Carnegie admitted that he was ‘denied much of a voice’, but his enthusiasm for the music forgave any ‘discords’.
¹⁵
He also browsed in the Swedenborgian library and wrote for their tract
Dewdrop
. Significantly for his future pacifism, he wrote an article denouncing the Crimean War, which had broken out in 1854 with its first engagement at the Battle of Alma on 20 September.
¹⁶

Andrew Carnegie had served as a telegraph messenger for some twelve months when office manager Colonel John P. Glass recruited him to ‘watch’ the downstairs office in his absence. These duties became more frequent as Glass pursued other interests, and Carnegie quickly learned various other aspects of the telegraphic business. In the process he encountered some hostility from the other telegraphic boys, which reminded him of being taunted as ‘Martin’s pet’ during his childhood. One of his future character traits became apparent at this time, too – a meddlesome approach to the work and affairs of others. Another bone of contention with his office peers was that they considered Carnegie to be mean; he never socialised with his fellow workers, preferring to save every penny. However, gradually the Carnegies amassed enough dollars to repay the £20 Ailie Ferguson Henderson had advanced for their 1848 passage; the debt once idemnified, ‘that was a day we celebrated’.
¹⁷

Then came a moment of panic. One pay day Colonel Glass failed to pay Andrew Carnegie’s wages. Was he to get the sack? Relief came when Glass revealed that Carnegie was to receive a pay rise for his satisfactory extra office work, his salary rising from $11.25 to $13.50 per month. Carnegie was triumphant: ‘No subsequent success, or recognition of any kind, ever thrilled me as this did.’
¹⁸
On his return home he handed his mother the $11.25 she was expecting and he gave no indication that he had had a rise. He wanted to savour the moment. With his brother he fantasised, as they retired to bed that night, that one day they would go into business together as ‘Carnegie Brothers’. Next morning he told his proud mother of the rise, enjoying his moment of theatricality.

In 1852 Andrew Carnegie began to learn the art of telegraphy, its operation and language. Before the telegraph operators came into the office each morning the messenger boys had to clean the floors. Carnegie’s innate sense of opportunism caused him to try sending and receiving messages on the unattended machines. On one occasion he ventured to take down a message without permission; tentatively he told David Brooks what he had done and instead of receiving the expected reprimand he was complimented on his actions but warned to be careful. His cheek paid off and he was allowed to relieve the regular telegraph operators from time to time. The system of receiving messages was complicated; they came through on a roll of paper tape, printed with the dots and dashes of the Morse alphabet (later called Morse Code) invented in 1832 by Samuel Morse, and then they had to be translated by the operator. Carnegie heard that operators elsewhere were taking messages by
listening
to the transmission of the Morse Code letters instead of reading them off the tape. Despite being mocked by his fellows, Carnegie learned to receive messages this way, which proved much quicker. Soon he was given a trial as a relief operator at Greensburg, some 30 miles from Pittsburgh. At Greensburg Andrew Carnegie observed the foundation work being carried out for the Pennsylvania Railroad, little realising that this venture would be his next great opportunity.