by Peter Krass
Notes
1. Letters of Grover Cleveland, pp. 621–623.
2. AC to Elihu Root, June 9, 1908, ACLOC, vol. 154.
3. Eleanor Wilson McAdoo, ed., The Priceless Gift: The Love Letters of Woodrow Wilson and Ellen Axson Wilson (New York: McGraw-Hill, 1962), p. 251.
4. Strouse, p. 601.
5. AC to John Morley, February 24, 1909, ACLOC, vol. 163.
6. Elihu Root to AC, April 3, 1909, ACLOC, vol. 165.
7. Baroness Berthe von Suttner to AC, May 22, 1909, ACLOC, vol. 166.
8. Gompers, p. 328.
9. Gilder, p. 483.
10. Theodore Roosevelt to AC, June 1, 1909, ACLOC, vol. 166; Bartle Bull, Safari: A Chronicle of Adventure (New York: Viking, 1988), pp. 169, 173, 175; H. W. Brands, T.R.: The Last Romantic (New York: Basic Books, 1997), p. 657.
11. AC to John Morley, June 20, 1909, ACLOC, vol. 167.
12. AC to John Morley, n.d., ACLOC, vol. 167.
13. AC to Theodore Roosevelt, October 6, 1909, ACLOC, vol. 170.
14. Theodore Roosevelt to AC, October 16, 1909, ACLOC, vol. 170.
15. Theodore Roosevelt to AC, November 22, 1909, ACLOC, vol. 171.
16. AC to John Morley, October 22, 1909, ACLOC, vol. 170.
17. AC to Theodore Roosevelt, December 24, 1909, ACLOC, vol. 172.
18. Theodore Roosevelt to AC, December 14, 1909, quoted in Hendrick, Carnegie, vol. 2, p. 326
19. AC to Theodore Roosevelt, January 3, 1910, ACLOC, vol. 173.
20. Elihu Root to AC, February 11, 1910, ACLOC, vol. 174.
21. Theodore Roosevelt to AC, February 18, 1910, ACLOC, vol. 174.
22. AC to William H. Taft, March 26, 1910, ACLOC, vol. 175.
23. AC to David J. Hill, March 25, 1910, ACLOC, vol. 175.
24. AC to Theodore Roosevelt, April 27, 1910, ACLOC, vol. 176.
25. Brands, p. 662.
26. Theodore Roosevelt to AC, April 22, 1910, ACLOC, vol. 176.
27. Theodore Roosevelt, Theodore Roosevelt: An Autobiography (New York: Da Capo Press, 1985), p. 314.
28. AC to Whitelaw Reid, May 10, 1910, ACLOC, vol. 176.
29. AC to David J. Hill, May 11, 1910, ACLOC, vol. 176.
30. AC to Whitelaw Reid, May 14, 1910, ACLOC, vol. 176.
31. Theodore Roosevelt to AC, June 14, 1910, ACLOC, vol. 177.
32. AC to William H. Taft, July 22, 1910, ACLOC, vol. 178; William H. Taft to Philander Knox, July 7, 1910, quoted in Wall, Carnegie, p. 981.
33. Fabian, p. 39.
34. Ibid., p. 4.
35. AC to John Morley, November 4, 1910, quoted in Fabian, p. 3.
36. Fabian, p. 42.
37. Nicholas Murray Butler to AC, November 24, 1910, ACLOC, vol. 182.
38. AC to William H. Taft, December 10, 1910, quoted in Fabian, p. 42.
39. Fabian, p. 20.
40. “Carnegie’s Greatest Gift,” Independent (December 15, 1910).
41. Baron d’Estournelles de Constant to AC, December 15, 1910, ACLOC, vol. 184.
42. John Morley to AC, December 15, 1910, ACLOC, vol. 184.
43. Fabian, p. 45.
44. John Bigelow to J. G. Schmidlapp, December 22, 1910, ACLOC, vol. 185.
45. A Manual of the Public Benefactions of Andrew Carnegie, p. 165.
46. Nicholas Murray Butler, “The Carnegie Endowment for International Peace,” Independent (November 27, 1913).
47. Fabian, p. 47.
48. Ibid., pp. 48–49.
49. Wall, Carnegie, pp. 912–913.
50. AC to Philander Knox, May 19, 1911, quoted in ibid., p. 983.
51. Fabian, p. 51.
52. Theodore Roosevelt to AC, May 23, 1911, ACLOC, vol. 193.
53. William H. Taft to AC, May 20, 1911, ACLOC, vol. 193.
54. James Bryce to AC, June 24, 1911, ACLOC, vol. 194.
55. James Bryce to AC, June 30, 1911, ACLOC, vol. 194.
56. Charles D. Hilles to AC, June 28, 1911, ACLOC, vol. 195.
57. AC to John Morley, June 29, 1911, ACLOC, vol. 195.
58. AC to John Morley, July 2, 1911, ACLOC, vol. 195.
59. AC to John Morley, July 16, 1911, ACLOC, vol. 196.
60. Elihu Root to AC, August 29, 1911, ACLOC, vol. 197.
61. AC to James Bryce, September 2, 1911, quoted in Wall, Carnegie, p. 988.
62. Fabian, p. 54.
63. Francis B. Loomis to AC, December 13, 1911, ACLOC, vol. 201.
64. AC to John Morley, July 11, 1912, ACLOC, vol. 207.
65. Philander Knox to AC, March 27, 1911, quoted in Wall, Carnegie, p. 983; Fabian, p. 56.
66. Miller, p. 522.
67. AC to Theodore Roosevelt, March 1, 1912, ACLOC, vol. 204.
68. Theodore Roosevelt to AC, March 5, 1912, quoted in Wall, Carnegie, pp. 992–993.
69. AC to Theodore Roosevelt, March 10, 1912, ACLOC, vol. 204.
70. AC to John Morley, May 12, 1912, ACLOC, vol. 206.
71. William H. Taft to AC, March 28, 1912, ACLOC, vol. 204.
72. Charles D. Hilles to AC, November 1, 1912, ACLOC, vol. 210. Carnegie’s note at bottom: “I gave . . . in all 100,000$. Glad I was the largest contributor for Taft.”
CHAPTER 34
The Last Great Benefaction
Carnegie’s obsession with peace was evident in that since his 1905 creation of the Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching, there had been no major new philanthropic endeavors outside the realm of peace. Libraries did remain his pet, and he continued to fund them at a torrid pace; yet, in 1910, he still had about $180 million to disburse. Time was not on his side, and so, under the growing fear of dying rich, he realized radical action was called for to purge both his Hoboken, New Jersey, vault and any final doubts lingering in his conscience.
One creation that had still been consuming a relatively large percentage of Carnegie’s interest, energy, and money was his Pittsburgh institute. In April 1907, Carnegie was in Pittsburgh celebrating the historic opening of the institute’s magnificent Art Gallery and Natural Museum of History, six years in the making. Railroad carloads of celebrities were brought from Europe, as were heads of state from around the world, for the three-day celebration held over April 11, 12, and 13. The night before the dedication, as Carnegie and Louise prepared to retire, the benefactor became overwhelmed by what had been accomplished in Pittsburgh, by the sudden grandeur of the Carnegie Institute, which now measured among the elite museums of the world. In a tremulous voice, he said to his wife, “It is like the mansion raised in the night by the genii, who obeyed Aladdin.”
“Yes, and you did not even have to rub the lamp.”
Speaking at the dedication, his words reflected the amazement expressed to Louise the night before. “I have been in a dream ever since I arrived here,” he told the enraptured audience, “and I am still in a dream. As I look upon this building, I can hardly realize what has been done in my absence by the men who have made it. I have tried to make myself realize that I have anything to do with it, and have failed to do so.”1 Many a time Carnegie attempted to comprehend just exactly how he’d come to have such enormous wealth, but he could not—it was like attempting to grasp the unfathomable size of the universe. A correspondent for Cosmopolitan concurred: “All the people, in a general way, know about Mr. Carnegie; but how few really grasp the fairy-tale in all its fulness! It extinguishes the glory of Croesus and makes the story of Aladdin seem cheap.”2
Almost quadruple the size it once was, the institute was now an imposing three-story building of gray sandstone in the American Renaissance style. The entrance to the gallery and museum was graced with bronze statues of Bach, Galileo, Michelangelo, and Shakespeare, and the interior was lavishly decorated, including a generous use of variegated marble—six thousand tons imported from Europe. The top floors of the art galleries and museum opened to a glass roof and a brooding Hall of Architecture, capped by a pyramidal roof, bridged the new building and the old.
As visitors entered the Hall of Architecture, they felt as thou
gh they had stepped back into the ancient and the medieval worlds as they encountered a re-creation of the tomb of King Mausolus of Halicarnassus and the entire facade of a twelfth-century Romanesque church, among other casts of architectural monuments. Carnegie had commissioned an army of agents to seek out the best models in architecture and sculpture to be cast in plaster for the museum, and the agents had spent five years traipsing about Europe to secure the casts. Also home to such casts, the museum’s Hall of Sculpture was built to the scale of the Parthenon, with white columns of Pentelic marble and a duplicate of the Parthenon frieze. As for the art galleries, Carnegie didn’t want old masters; he wanted new masters who would then become old, his logic being that the masses of the people would better appreciate contemporary work they could relate to.3 And the institute’s Natural Museum of History could finally display the Diplodocus carnegii, discovered in 1898, in the bone-chilling Hall of Dinosaurs. As could have been expected, the satirists had a field day comparing the capitalist to the dinosaur: both had huge appetites, and the robber baron was now on the verge of extinction in the Roosevelt era. The museum would soon have one of the most important collections of South American fishes, among other superlative collections, and plundered treasures that would garner a world-renowned reputation.
Carnegie capped off the festivities by giving another $5 million toward the endowment, bringing the total to $6 million. It was estimated he had now given some $25 million to the institute in money and material in his zeal as a trustee of civilization.4
On the library front, requests dwindled in 1907–1908 as towns couldn’t make the financial commitment due to the economic downturn. For those keeping score, Collier’s magazine provided a tally. As of December 31, 1908, the magazine noted, Carnegie had given $51,596,903 to libraries in these countries:
United States 959 buildings
England and Wales 329
Scotland 105
Canada 86
Ireland 42
New Zealand 14
British West Indies 5
South Africa 3
Australia and Tasmania 2
Seychelles Islands 1
Fiji Islands 1
Libraries had been built in 47 states and the District of Columbia, with Illinois leading the way at 81, followed by Iowa and Ohio with 78 and 71, respectively. Pennsylvania had 39 and New York, 47. In an interview for the Collier’s article, Carnegie confirmed his joy in giving to libraries: “The letters received from parents thanking me for libraries established and telling of the change these have made upon their children are numerous. It is not only what a library does in a community; that is only one-half of its sphere. What it prevents is equally important. If young men do not spend their evenings in the library, where will they be spending them? If the young do not acquire a taste for reading, what will they otherwise acquire?”5 By now, Carnegie recognized that it was the youth who would benefit, not the workingmen in the mills he originally intended to aid.
For his unheralded munificence, King Edward had wanted to honor Carnegie and offered a title in 1908, but he respectfully demurred. He preferred a letter of appreciation for his study wall, which the King accommodated. “You have no doubt seen the action of the king,” Carnegie, who still reveled in receiving commendations, wrote his Dunfermline solicitor Ross. “The question was whether there was any way in which His Majesty could honor me which I would appreciate. My, what a chance I lost! I might have been a duke! Then you would have treated me with respect, and to get over your bossing me was something of a temptation.”6
Contrary to any lack of respect Ross may have displayed on occasion, Carnegie, with a face as craggy as the rough Highlands and thinning white hair, was, in the general public’s opinion, a national treasure, not a ruthless robber baron. No longer did his name evoke images of smoky Homestead with trigger-happy Pinkertons and bloodthirsty steelworkers. Now he was a wizened benefactor and sage, and the newspapers on both sides of the Atlantic continued to seek his opinion on all the issues of the day.
The papers also continued to keep a scorecard of his philanthropy versus that of Rockefeller. On December 21, 1910, the New York American estimated Carnegie’s total lifetime giving at $179,300,000 versus Rockefeller’s $134,271,000. Moreover, Rockefeller still demurred to Carnegie as the king of benefaction, and even sought his advice on setting up a trust company to administer his estate.7 Far more discreet than his Scottish peer, the oil baron appeared detached from his philanthropy, which prompted Carnegie’s friend Charles Eliot to observe, “Mr. Rockefeller’s method of giving away money impersonally on the basis of investigation by others was careful and conscientious; but it must have cut him off almost completely from the real happiness which good deeds brought to the doer.”8
In spite of the king’s letter of commendation and beating Rockefeller in the benefaction race, Carnegie was forced to admit that his money giving had bogged down and that the eternally infernal headaches that arose with each new benefaction were beginning to depress him. During a speech in Edinburgh, he had paused and, breaking from his prepared text, he said, “Millionaires who laugh are rare, very rare, indeed.”9 No longer was philanthropy as enjoyable as golf. He found himself with about $180 million still in the bank, and he despaired over leaving Louise with the responsibility of dispensing with his surplus wealth if he were to die. Despondent, he turned to one of the few men who had proved trustworthy: Elihu Root.
An earnest and worried-looking man, Root’s mouth appeared carved into a frown, but his short bangs and trim mustache balanced his seriousness with a touch of boyishness. Overall, he did not leave a domineering impression. What made him unique was his direct frankness with any man and his skill in tempering the impulsiveness of such men as Carnegie and Roosevelt. Once, when debating policy with Root, an irritated Roosevelt said, “Oh, go to the devil, Root!” Unflustered, the secretary raised his glass in mock salute to the president and responded blithely, “I come, Sir, I come.”10 Unlike Roosevelt, Root harbored no duplicitous feelings toward Carnegie. Like the philanthropist, he was a devout disciple of peace and would win the 1912 Nobel Peace Prize. He also agreed with Carnegie’s “Gospel of Wealth,” becoming an invaluable adviser to the benefactor—but never asking for money for his own pet causes like Roosevelt, Wilson, and White, among so many others.
Carnegie’s first step was to draft a revision of his will, adding a provision for a great philanthropic trust to be created on his death to take the onus off Louise, which he then gave to Root for review. After examining it, he pointed out what had happened to Samuel J. Tilden, a case Carnegie knew well. Tilden’s trust had been challenged in court and tied up for years. To avoid any legal entanglements, Root suggested he create such a trust now to administer the bulk of his remaining wealth and therefore take the burden off Carnegie himself, who, along with his secretaries, shouldered overwhelming responsibilities. At first he was reluctant, but as Root told him, “You have had the best run for your money I have ever known.”11 It was time to cross the finish line. On June 9, 1911, the New York State legislature passed an act to establish the Carnegie Corporation, the trust Root envisioned. He endowed it with $25 million to start, then added $75 million in January 1912, and another $25 million the next October to bring the total to $125 million. Carnegie served as the first president, Root as vice president, Robert Franks as vice president and treasurer, and Bertram as secretary. These men plus five others— including Carnegie’s newly hired personal secretary, John A. Poynton—com-prised the board of trustees.
At the first meeting, held at his Ninety-first Street home on November 11, Carnegie delivered the charge “to promote the advancement and diffusion of knowledge and understanding among the people of the United States by aiding technical schools, institutions of higher lerning, libraries, scientific research, hero funds, useful publications, and by such other agencies and means as shall from time to time be found appropriate therefore.” The trustees were given “full authority to change policy or clauses hithe
rto aided, from time to time, when this, in their opinion becomes necessary or desirable. They shall best conform to my wishes by using their own judgment.” It was the first endowment that gave the trustees a completely free hand to distribute the money as they thought best—in perpetuity—and he concluded his gift letter by stating, “My chief happiness as I write these lines lies in the thot that even after I pass away the welth that came to me to administer as a sacred trust for the good of my fellow men is to continue to benefit humanity for generation untold.”12 This idea of being made immortal by the trust appealed to him.
While the corporation did not target a specific cause, it would predominantly support his existing projects and initiatives, with the corporation’s largest contributions being to the Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching ($15,250,000), the building of libraries ($14,174,148.91), and the Carnegie Institute at Pittsburgh ($6,500,979.67). Eventually it would give away almost $50 million prior to Carnegie’s death.
Certainly, in any moments spared from his peace campaign, Carnegie remained active in promoting his foundations’ work, both to the benefit and to the chagrin of his trustees. Work by the Carnegie Institution of Washington always intrigued him. Entranced with astronomy, in January 1911, Carnegie visited the Mount Wilson observatory in the mountains of southern California, a site funded by the institution, to gaze on his godless heavens. The observatory enjoyed the most advanced facilities yet, including a telescope tube with a sixty-inch aperture, the largest at the time. Carnegie enjoyed telling friends that the telescope revealed sixty thousand new suns, while cynics remarked that was akin to finding sixty thousand new gallons of water in Lake Michigan. When he learned that for $500,000 the observatory could obtain an even more powerful telescope one hundred inches in diameter, he decided to give another $10 million in bonds (yielding $500,000 annually) to the institution’s endowment, shooting tremors through the scientific community, but with the money came the demand for the new telescope. “I hope the work at Mount Wilson will be vigorously pushed because I am so anxious to hear the expected results from it,” he wrote his “independent” trustees. “I should like to be satisfied, before I depart, that we are going to repay to the old land some part of the debt we owe them by revealing more clearly than ever to them the new heavens.”13 How gloriously righteous if the telescope could prove the Heaven guarded by St. Peter was pure myth.