Autobiography of Andrew Carnegie
He was a partner owning a two per cent interest when the Carnegie
Steel Company was merged into the United States Steel Corporation.]
Our competitors in steel were at first disposed to ignore us. Knowing
the difficulties they had in starting their own steel works, they
could not believe we would be ready to deliver rails for another year
and declined to recognize us as competitors. The price of steel rails
when we began was about seventy dollars per ton. We sent our agent
through the country with instructions to take orders at the best
prices he could obtain; and before our competitors knew it, we had
obtained a large number--quite sufficient to justify us in making a
start.
So perfect was the machinery, so admirable the plans, so skillful were
the men selected by Captain Jones, and so great a manager was he
himself, that our success was phenomenal. I think I place a unique
statement on record when I say that the result of the first month's
operations left a margin of profit of $11,000. It is also remarkable
that so perfect was our system of accounts that we knew the exact
amount of the profit. We had learned from experience in our iron works
what exact accounting meant. There is nothing more profitable than
clerks to check up each transfer of material from one department to
another in process of manufacture.
The new venture in steel having started off so promisingly, I began to
think of taking a holiday, and my long-cherished purpose of going
around the world came to the front. Mr. J.W. Vandevort ("Vandy") and I
accordingly set out in the autumn of 1878. I took with me several pads
suitable for penciling and began to make a few notes day by day, not
with any intention of publishing a book; but thinking, perhaps, I
might print a few copies of my notes for private circulation. The
sensation which one has when he first sees his remarks in the form of
a printed book is great. When the package came from the printers I
re-read the book trying to decide whether it was worth while to send
copies to my friends. I came to the conclusion that upon the whole it
was best to do so and await the verdict.
The writer of a book designed for his friends has no reason to
anticipate an unkind reception, but there is always some danger of its
being damned with faint praise. The responses in my case, however,
exceeded expectations, and were of such a character as to satisfy me
that the writers really had enjoyed the book, or meant at least a part
of what they said about it. Every author is prone to believe sweet
words. Among the first that came were in a letter from Anthony Drexel,
Philadelphia's great banker, complaining that I had robbed him of
several hours of sleep. Having begun the book he could not lay it down
and retired at two o'clock in the morning after finishing. Several
similar letters were received. I remember Mr. Huntington, president of
the Central Pacific Railway, meeting me one morning and saying he was
going to pay me a great compliment.
"What is it?" Tasked.
"Oh, I read your book from end to end."
"Well," I said, "that is not such a great compliment. Others of our
mutual friends have done that."
"Oh, yes, but probably none of your friends are like me. I have not
read a book for years except my ledger and I did not intend to read
yours, but when I began it I could not lay it down. My ledger is the
only book I have gone through for five years."
I was not disposed to credit all that my friends said, but others who
had obtained the book from them were pleased with it and I lived for
some months under intoxicating, but I trust not perilously pernicious,
flattery. Several editions of the book were printed to meet the
request for copies. Some notices of it and extracts got into the
papers, and finally Charles Scribner's Sons asked to publish it for
the market. So "Round the World"[36] came before the public and I was
at last "an author."
[Footnote 36: _Round the World_, by Andrew Carnegie. New York and
London, 1884.]
A new horizon was opened up to me by this voyage. It quite changed my
intellectual outlook. Spencer and Darwin were then high in the zenith,
and I had become deeply interested in their work. I began to view the
various phases of human life from the standpoint of the evolutionist.
In China I read Confucius; in India, Buddha and the sacred books of
the Hindoos; among the Parsees, in Bombay, I studied Zoroaster. The
result of my journey was to bring a certain mental peace. Where there
had been chaos there was now order. My mind was at rest. I had a
philosophy at last. The words of Christ "The Kingdom of Heaven is
within you," had a new meaning for me. Not in the past or in the
future, but now and here is Heaven within us. All our duties lie in
this world and in the present, and trying impatiently to peer into
that which lies beyond is as vain as fruitless.
All the remnants of theology in which I had been born and bred, all
the impressions that Swedenborg had made upon me, now ceased to
influence me or to occupy my thoughts. I found that no nation had all
the truth in the revelation it regards as divine, and no tribe is so
low as to be left without some truth; that every people has had its
great teacher; Buddha for one; Confucius for another; Zoroaster for a
third; Christ for a fourth. The teachings of all these I found
ethically akin so that I could say with Matthew Arnold, one I was so
proud to call friend:
"Children of men! the unseen Power, whose eye
For ever doth accompany mankind
Hath looked on no religion scornfully
That men did ever find.
Which has not taught weak wills how much they can?
Which has not fall'n in the dry heart like rain?
Which has not cried to sunk, self-weary man,
_Thou must be born again_."
"The Light of Asia," by Edwin Arnold, came out at this time and gave
me greater delight than any similar poetical work I had recently read.
I had just been in India and the book took me there again. My
appreciation of it reached the author's ears and later having made his
acquaintance in London, he presented me with the original manuscript
of the book. It is one of my most precious treasures. Every person who
can, even at a sacrifice, make the voyage around the world should do
so. All other travel compared to it seems incomplete, gives us merely
vague impressions of parts of the whole. When the circle has been
completed, you feel on your return that you have seen (of course only
in the mass) all there is to be seen. The parts fit into one
symmetrical whole and you see humanity wherever it is placed working
out a destiny tending to one definite end.
The world traveler who gives careful study to the bibles of the
various religions of the East will be well repaid. The conclusion
reached will be that the inhabitants of each country consider their
own religion the best of all. They rejoice that their lot has been
cast where it is, and are disposed to pity the less fortunate
condemned to live beyond their sacred limits. The masses of all
nations are usually happy, each mass certain that:
"East or West
Home is best."
Two illustrations of this from our "Round the World" trip may be
noted:
Visiting the tapioca workers in the woods near Singapore, we
found them busily engaged, the children running about stark
naked, the parents clothed in the usual loose rags. Our
party attracted great attention. We asked our guide to tell
the people that we came from a country where the water in
such a pond as that before us would become solid at this
season of the year and we could walk upon it and that
sometimes it would be so hard horses and wagons crossed wide
rivers on the ice. They wondered and asked why we didn't
come and live among them. They really were very happy.
Again:
On the way to the North Cape we visited a reindeer camp of
the Laplanders. A sailor from the ship was deputed to go
with the party. I walked homeward with him, and as we
approached the fiord looking down and over to the opposite
shore we saw a few straggling huts and one two-story house
under construction. What is that new building for? we asked.
"That is to be the home of a man born in Tromso who has made
a great deal of money and has now come back to spend his
days there. He is very rich."
"You told me you had travelled all over the world. You have
seen London, New York, Calcutta, Melbourne, and other
places. If you made a fortune like that man what place would
you make your home in old age?" His eye glistened as he
said:
"Ah, there's no place like Tromso." This is in the arctic
circle, six months of night, but he had been born in Tromso.
Home, sweet, sweet home!
Among the conditions of life or the laws of nature, some of which seem
to us faulty, some apparently unjust and merciless, there are many
that amaze us by their beauty and sweetness. Love of home, regardless
of its character or location, certainly is one of these. And what a
pleasure it is to find that, instead of the Supreme Being confining
revelation to one race or nation, every race has the message best
adapted for it in its present stage of development. The Unknown Power
has neglected none.
CHAPTER XV
COACHING TRIP AND MARRIAGE
The Freedom of my native town (Dunfermline) was conferred upon me July
12, 1877, the first Freedom and the greatest honor I ever received. I
was overwhelmed. Only two signatures upon the roll came between mine
and Sir Walter Scott's, who had been made a Burgess. My parents had
seen him one day sketching Dunfermline Abbey and often told me about
his appearance. My speech in reply to the Freedom was the subject of
much concern. I spoke to my Uncle Bailie Morrison, telling him I just
felt like saying so and so, as this really was in my heart. He was an
orator himself and he spoke words of wisdom to me then.
"Just say that, Andra; nothing like saying just what you really feel."
It was a lesson in public speaking which I took to heart. There is one
rule I might suggest for youthful orators. When you stand up before an
audience reflect that there are before you only men and women. You
should speak to them as you speak to other men and women in daily
intercourse. If you are not trying to be something different from
yourself, there is no more occasion for embarrassment than if you were
talking in your office to a party of your own people--none whatever.
It is trying to be other than one's self that unmans one. Be your own
natural self and go ahead. I once asked Colonel Ingersoll, the most
effective public speaker I ever heard, to what he attributed his
power. "Avoid elocutionists like snakes," he said, "and be yourself."
I spoke again at Dunfermline, July 27, 1881, when my mother laid the
foundation stone there of the first free library building I ever gave.
My father was one of five weavers who founded the earliest library in
the town by opening their own books to their neighbors. Dunfermline
named the building I gave "Carnegie Library." The architect asked for
my coat of arms. I informed him I had none, but suggested that above
the door there might be carved a rising sun shedding its rays with the
motto: "Let there be light." This he adopted.
We had come up to Dunfermline with a coaching party. When walking
through England in the year 1867 with George Lauder and Harry Phipps I
had formed the idea of coaching from Brighton to Inverness with a
party of my dearest friends. The time had come for the long-promised
trip, and in the spring of 1881 we sailed from New York, a party of