Carnegie

by Peter Krass

  The telegraph business continued to boom and soon there were four couriers, two boys handling messages coming in from the east and two assigned to the west. Andy made lifelong friends that first year, including David McCargo, later superintendent of the Allegheny Valley Railway; Henry Oliver, later an iron and ore tycoon; and Robert Pitcairn, later the Pittsburgh superintendent of the Pennsylvania Railroad. Always on their toes for fear of dismissal, the boys were driven to a higher level of tremulous excitement by Superintendent James Reid’s inspections. Reid later recalled that Andy “was prompt, intelligent and industrious . . . and performed his duties well and cheerfully.”17

  As Andy ventured into Pittsburgh, he discovered a city still rebuilding from its great fire of 1845, in which twelve hundred buildings burned to the ground. The streets and sidewalks were clogged by merchants hawking their wares, by draymen and stablemen with parked horses and wagons, and by loafers. In addition to the thriving business community, Andy also encountered culture at the Pittsburgh Theater. The owner, a Mr. Foster, was provided with complimentary telegraph correspondence; in return, the operators were given free admission. Because this barter did not explicitly extend to the messengers, the more clever boys would hold onto Foster’s telegrams until evening, and then present them at the door in hopes of being invited in for the show. The rose- colored boxes, the crimson seats edged with velvet and brass nails, the crystal chandeliers, and the gold-embroidered draperies gave Andy a taste of society life. When the theatre presented Shakespeare’s Macbeth, the play captured his imagination: “Never before had I realized what magic lay in words. The rhythm and the melody all seemed to find a resting-place in me, to melt into a solid mass which lay ready to come to call. It was a new language and its appreciation I certainly owe to dramatic representation, for, until I saw ‘Macbeth’ played, my interest in Shakespeare was not aroused.”18

  The boys appreciated their exalted rank of messenger; it sure beat the bobbin factory or some other hellish job. Granted, blistered feet and being on duty until 11 p.m. every other day were causes for complaint; and sometimes the boys had to shin up a telegraph pole to help adjust the wire, a job Andy tried to avoid because he was an admittedly “poor climber.”19 There was one bone of contention among the boys—dime messages. Because these telegrams took the boys to the outskirts of Pittsburgh, they were rewarded with an extra dime, but quarrels arose over boys taking dime messages out of turn, a serious infraction. Displaying the astute capitalist’s tendency to create cooperative pools to eliminate destructive competition, Andy proposed they pool the dimes and “divide the cash equally at the end of each week.” Naturally, he was appointed treasurer. He later said of his “first essay in financial organization” that “peace and good-humor reigned ever afterwards.”20 It would prove to be the first and last of his pools in which peace and good humor reigned; once in the iron and steel industry, Carnegie’s cooperative relationships with competitors would be exceptionally stormy.

  Up against a violent city in which death took victims indiscriminately, Andy, now making $11.25 a month, continued to fight that wolf of poverty, saving every one of those additional dimes. Meanwhile, the other boys spent their bonuses at the neighboring confectioner’s shop, even establishing running accounts that drew on future dimes. Unable to ignore his comrades’ spendthrift ways, Andy attempted to police their habits by notifying the confectioner that he would not be responsible for any debts contracted by his greedy comrades. One of Andy’s friends from that period said to him years later, “The whole trend of your mind seemed to be towards big things. Indeed, I recall that your efforts to do the pranks of the average boy struck me at the time as being almost grotesque. You would not follow the fashion in dress, because, I supposed, you believed it to be the evidence of a little mind.”21 The boys disparaged Andy for his formal dress suits and for his extreme frugality because they didn’t appreciate how much every penny counted in the Carnegie home. Not only were they trying to build a new life, but spare half-dollars were hidden in one of Margaret’s stockings to eventually repay the £20 loaned by Ailie Henderson for the flitting.

  Andy also received additional heckling for assisting Mr. Glass, the office manager. John P. Glass’s job entailed receiving the messages from the public to be forwarded to the operators, distributing incoming telegrams to the messengers, and handling the finances. On occasion, when he stepped away, he asked Andy to watch the office for him and direct the messages—a reprieve from scurrying through the streets and another rung up the ladder. But then, on one of the monthly paydays, Andy thought that the worst had occurred, that he had made a fatal error and was to be dismissed: “We stood in a row before the counter, and Mr. Glass paid each one in turn. I was at the head and reached out my hand for the first eleven and a quarter dollars as they were pushed out by Mr. Glass. To my surprise he pushed them past me and paid the next boy. . . . My heart began to sink within me. Disgrace seemed coming. What had I done or not done? I was about to be told that there was no more work for me.” After paying the other boys, Mr. Glass took Andy aside and said to him that he was worth more than the other boys; he was giving Andy a raise to $13.50 a month.22 He alone was now earning almost a half of the $30 required monthly for their family to live with reasonable comfort.

  The moment the last fifty cents hit his hand, Andy bounded out the door and ran the entire two miles home. He gave his mother the usual $11.25, but he divulged nothing of the raise—and he wouldn’t until the next morning, with great dramatics. That night in bed he confided in Tom, telling him about the extra money and about some bigger plans he had in mind: “It was then, for the first time, I sketched to him how we would go into business together; that the firm of ‘Carnegie Brothers’ would be a great one, and that father and mother should ride in their carriage.”23 The dreams were vague, perhaps, but they were big, the sense of a glorified destiny beginning to formulate.

  Every morning Andy arrived early to sweep out the office, one of the other required chores. The operators had yet to arrive, so he was able to practice with the technological wizardry. For more than a year, Andy picked up pieces here and there on Morse code, sending and receiving practice messages to other aspiring messengers down the lines. Then one day he turned to his friend Tom David and, with eyes sparkling, said, “Tom, I can read nearly every word of that.”24 Regardless of their proficiency with Morse code, the boys never dared to interfere when the lines opened for business; that is, until Andy could contain himself no longer. One morning, he was sweeping the floors as usual when a death message came clicking over the line from Philadelphia. Death messages were obviously quite important to those concerned, and the operator sending this one seemed particularly excited. With no operators present, Andy, who was supremely confident at a young age, brazenly answered that he would take the message. It was risky; a mistake would cause others serious distress and cost him his job. Later that day, Andy explained his daring initiative to David Brooks, who complimented the action but warned him to be careful. From such experiences came one of Andy’s lifelong mantras: “The rising man must do something exceptional, and beyond the range of his special department. HE MUST ATTRACT ATTENTION.”25 Or, as his mother would say, he must light the fire to boil the water.

  Not long after, Carnegie started relieving the operators who desired a break, just as he had sat in for Mr. Glass; and when the company’s operator in Greensburg, thirty miles away, took a two-week vacation in June 1851, Brooks assigned Andy as his replacement.26 While in Greensburg, he was so determined to win a permanent position that he manned his post during a lightning storm, which was rather ill-advised. Sure enough, a blast of electricity threw him from his stool, but he survived the lesson. His stint was a complete success, of course; and as soon as there was an opening, Andy was promoted to full-time operator and given a raise to $4 a week. At age sixteen, he was the family’s unchallenged breadwinner.

  Finally there was good reason for him to write to Dunfermline. On Sunday, June 22, 1851, a h
ot summer day with the thermometer reaching ninety-two, Andy found shelter under a tree and composed a letter to his cousin Dod, the first of many they would exchange in their lifetimes. He divulged his new job as telegraph operator and proclaimed that someday he would return to Dunfermline, “for I can easily manage to save as much money if I behave well.”27 Prospects were indeed good that Andy would save enough money for a visit; but he would wait until he could arrive in grand fashion, or not at all.

  The family finances had improved considerably, and every so often they were able to buy a piece of furniture or some knickknack. Will had sporadic requests for webs and was now working in a vineyard belonging to the Allegheny City chapter of the Swedenborgian Society. Andy, Tom, and Aunt Annie accompanied Will to the Swedenborgian services. Andy joined the choir, but he couldn’t sing on key, incurring the wrath of the conductor, who occasionally rapped him on the knuckles with his baton. Although somewhat tone-deaf, music was the only aspect of church Andy found inspiring.

  Margaret still sewed shoes and was now helping out at her sister Annie’s grocery store. After three years, she was finally realizing the fruits of the emigration and her cultivation of Andy, for it was she who instilled in him the puritan work ethic, infused him with pride, confidence, and the conviction that he would rise gloriously above all the rest. Almost every day for over a year, even if he didn’t return home from work until midnight, she washed and pressed her boy’s clothes so he would be smartly dressed the next day. She also pushed her small son physically to give him strength. “When the other boys of the neighborhood weren’t allowed to skate on the pond on the ‘Sabath,’” a neighbor recalled, “she urged ‘Andra’ to go as exercise and the fresh air was more important to them than community criticism.” Now was not the time to ease off, so right after his promotion to operator she encouraged Andy “to wean himself from his boyhood playmates, and make new and more dignified ties in keeping with his future.”28 Sentimental friendships could not be an impediment to his success, but Andy wanted to be sentimental and yearned to duplicate the strong emotional bond he had had with his cousin Dod. As a result, his mother’s urging to sever ties with certain friends confused and troubled him.

  Late in 1851, a friend asked Andy and Tom to pose together for a photo. As they did, the elder brother draped his arm awkwardly and coldly around the other’s shoulders. Tom’s hands rested comfortably in his lap, his lips and eyes shaped into the whimsical, genial smirk of an untroubled boy. In sharp contrast, Andy’s eyes were wide, serious, and melancholy, and he wore a natural frown set in place for years. Although he considered himself an incurable optimist, he was equally dour and gloomy.

  At age sixteen, Carnegie, who both protected and bullied his younger brother, Tom, was a telegraph operator and the family’s breadwinner. (Courtesy of the Carnegie Library of Pittsburgh)

  Not long after Andy’s promotion, one of the other operators in the office, a Mr. Maclean, started taking messages by ear, transcribing the clicking sound directly to words. He challenged Andy to do the same, which the young man excelled at in no time. Reputed to be one of only three in the country who could do it, Andy became a local celebrity, with folks stopping in to see him at work. Although the celebrity was soon earning $25 a month for his skills, it was not enough, and for $1 a week he agreed to make five copies of the incoming news for a newspaper pool reporter who would then distribute the copies to the local papers. Andy pushed everything to the next level and did anything to get ahead.

  Now the Carnegies were financially prepared to emerge from their two small rooms over the loom shop, as they once had in Dunfermline, moving from the cramped Moodie Street cottage to the spacious Edgar Street home. Coincidently, the Hogans decided to move to East Liverpool, Ohio, and put the house on the market; but an untimely Allegheny River flood in the early spring of 1852 damaged the home, so instead of listing it for the $700 they had originally hoped for, the Hogans settled on $550.29 Able to afford this price, the Carnegies bought it, taking a loan to be paid back in two years. At long last they were landowners, a prospect denied them in Scotland. An extremely buoyant Andy immediately sent a lithograph of their home to Uncle Lauder, along with a letter in which he described the flood: “Every season when the snow melts on the mountains the Rivers raise very high but they have not been so high for 20 years before. It rained for 3 weeks almost constantly and both rivers rose at once. It was up to the ceiling in our house and for 2 days we had to live upstairs and sail about in rafts and skiffs. It was a great time.” Every disheartening setback continued to be glossed over by Andy as he disguised his inner feelings.

  His social and political consciousness emerged in this letter as Andy reported on the upcoming presidential election: “The politicians here are all in great excitement about the presidency. Every candidate (and there are about twenty) is trying everything he can think of to gain popularity. They write letters to different associations flattering them, make speeches on popular questions taking every occasion to flatter the Enlightened Citizens of the Great Republic & c & c. You would laugh to see how low they have to bow to their sovereigns the People. . . . 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 get that name from their hatred of slavery and slave labor. Slavery I hope will soon be abolished in this country.” The year Franklin Pierce was elected president, Andy recognized the tradition of American politicians to pander to special interest groups, a political weakness he would be sure to take advantage of. He would not become a Democrat, however; laissez-faire Republicans would be more to his capitalist taste. As for himself, Andy wrote, “I am sure it is far better for me that I came here. If I had been in Dunfermline working at the Loom its 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 my self some other branches.”30 His drive was evident, and he alone took responsibility for bettering himself—a perspective on success he would never abandon.

  Not surprisingly, Andy’s responsibilities increased at the telegraph office. When the flood that damaged the Hogans’ home also knocked out the telegraph line between Steubenville and Wheeling, Andy was sent to Steubenville to set up a temporary office for receiving incoming messages. He then shipped the telegrams the twenty-five miles to Wheeling, where they were forwarded to Pittsburgh. While in Steubenville, he learned his father would be passing by on his way to Cincinnati to sell a tablecloth, and they made plans to meet. He recalled what was a sad exchange between father and son:

  I remember how deeply affected I was on finding that instead of taking a cabin passage, he had resolved not to pay the price, but to go down the river as a deck passenger. I was indignant that one of so fine a nature should be compelled to travel thus. But there was comfort in saying:

  “Well, father, it will not be long before mother and you shall ride in your carriage.”

  My father was usually shy, reserved, and keenly sensitive, very saving of praise (a Scotch trait) lest his sons might be too greatly uplifted; but when touched he lost his self-control. He was so upon this occasion, and grasped my hand with a look which I often see and can never forget. He murmured slowly:

  “Andra, I am proud of you.”31

  Will fully recognized that Andy was now a man, the man of the house; the handshake was the passing of responsibility and a blessing.

  Notes

  1. Carnegie, Autobiography, p. 29.

  2. Carnegie, Autobiography, p. 31.

  3. Ibid., p. 33; Andrew Carnegie, “How I Served My Apprenticeship,” Youth’s Companion, April 23, 1896.

  4. Carnegie, Autobiography, p. 33.

  5. Carnegie, “How I Served My Apprenticeship.”

  6. Carnegie, Autobiography, p. 34.

  7. John K. Winkl
er, Incredible Carnegie (New York: Vanguard Press, 1931), p. 51.

  8. Thomas N. Miller to Andrew Carnegie [hereafter abbreviated as AC], quoted in Hendrick, Carnegie, vol. 1, p. 53.

  9. Hendrick, Carnegie, vol. 1, p. 56.

  10. Carnegie, Autobiography, p. 37.

  11. James D. Reid, The Telegraph in America (New York: Derby Brothers, 1879), pp. 160, 161.

  12. Hendrick, Carnegie, vol. 1, p. 56.

  13. Carnegie, Autobiography, p. 35.

  14. Ibid., pp. 37–38; Henry Wysham Lanier, “The Many-Sided Andrew Carnegie: A Citizen of the Republic,” World’s Work 1 (April 1901), p. 620.

  15. Carnegie, “How I Served My Apprenticeship.”

  16. David H. Wollman and Donald R. Inman, Portraits in Steel (Kent, Ohio: Kent State University Press, 1990), p. 29.

  17. Reid, p. 177.

  18. Carnegie, Autobiography, p. 47.

  19. “Carnegie on the Verge of Seventy,” Current Literature 42 (May 1907), pp. 501–502.

  20. Carnegie, Autobiography, p. 42.

  21. T. B. A. David to AC, May 20, 1903, ACLOC, vol. 96.

  22. Carnegie, Autobiography, p. 53.

  23. Ibid., p. 54.

  24. T. B. A. David to AC, May 20, 1903, ACLOC, vol. 96.

  25. Andrew Carnegie, “The Road to Business Success,” speech delivered before Curry Commercial College, June 23, 1885.