Autobiography of Andrew Carnegie Part 18

I was despaired of, I was so low, and then my whole nature seemed to change. I became reconciled, indulged in pleasing meditations, was without the slightest pain. My mother's and brother's serious condition had not been revealed to me, and when I was informed that both had left me forever it seemed only natural that I should follow them. We had never been separated; why should we be now? But it was decreed otherwise.

I recovered slowly and the future began to occupy my thoughts. There was only one ray of hope and comfort in it. Toward that my thoughts always turned. For several years I had known Miss Louise Whitfield.

Her mother permitted her to ride with me in the Central Park. We were both very fond of riding. Other young ladies were on my list. I had fine horses and often rode in the Park and around New York with one or the other of the circle. In the end the others all faded into ordinary beings. Miss Whitfield remained alone as the perfect one beyond any I had met. Finally I began to find and admit to myself that she stood the supreme test I had applied to several fair ones in my time. She alone did so of all I had ever known. I could recommend young men to apply this test before offering themselves. If they can honestly believe the following lines, as I did, then all is well:

"Full many a lady I've eyed with best regard: for several virtues Have I liked several women, never any With so full soul, but some defect in her Did quarrel with the n.o.blest grace she owed, And put it to the foil; but you, O you, So perfect and so peerless are created Of every creature's best."[38]

[Footnote 38: Ferdinand to Miranda in _The Tempest_.]

In my soul I could echo those very words. To-day, after twenty years of life with her, if I could find stronger words I could truthfully use them.

My advances met with indifferent success. She was not without other and younger admirers. My wealth and future plans were against me. I was rich and had everything and she felt she could be of little use or benefit to me. Her ideal was to be the real helpmeet of a young, struggling man to whom she could and would be indispensable, as her mother had been to her father. The care of her own family had largely fallen upon her after her father's death when she was twenty-one. She was now twenty-eight; her views of life were formed. At times she seemed more favorable and we corresponded. Once, however, she returned my letters saying she felt she must put aside all thought of accepting me.

Professor and Mrs. Dennis took me from Cresson to their own home in New York, as soon as I could be removed, and I lay there some time under the former's personal supervision. Miss Whitfield called to see me, for I had written her the first words from Cresson I was able to write. She saw now that I needed her. I was left alone in the world. Now she could be in every sense the "helpmeet." Both her heart and head were now willing and the day was fixed. We were married in New York April 22, 1887, and sailed for our honeymoon which was pa.s.sed on the Isle of Wight.

[Ill.u.s.tration: ANDREW CARNEGIE

(ABOUT 1878)]

Her delight was intense in finding the wild flowers. She had read of Wandering Willie, Heartsease, Forget-me-nots, the Primrose, Wild Thyme, and the whole list of homely names that had been to her only names till now. Everything charmed her. Uncle Lauder and one of my cousins came down from Scotland and visited us, and then we soon followed to the residence at Kilgraston they had selected for us in which to spend the summer. Scotland captured her. There was no doubt about that. Her girlish reading had been of Scotland--Scott's novels and "Scottish Chiefs" being her favorites. She soon became more Scotch than I. All this was fulfilling my fondest dreams.

We spent some days in Dunfermline and enjoyed them much. The haunts and incidents of my boyhood were visited and recited to her by all and sundry. She got nothing but flattering accounts of her husband which gave me a good start with her.

I was presented with the Freedom of Edinburgh as we pa.s.sed northward--Lord Rosebery making the speech. The crowd in Edinburgh was great. I addressed the working-men in the largest hall and received a present from them as did Mrs. Carnegie also--a brooch she values highly. She heard and saw the pipers in all their glory and begged there should be one at our home--a piper to walk around and waken us in the morning and also to play us in to dinner. American as she is to the core, and Connecticut Puritan at that, she declared that if condemned to live upon a lonely island and allowed to choose only one musical instrument, it would be the pipes. The piper was secured quickly enough. One called and presented credentials from Cluny McPherson. We engaged him and were preceded by him playing the pipes as we entered our Kilgraston house.

We enjoyed Kilgraston, although Mrs. Carnegie still longed for a wilder and more Highland home. Matthew Arnold visited us, as did Mr.

and Mrs. Blaine, Senator and Mrs. Eugene Hale, and many friends.[39]

Mrs. Carnegie would have my relatives up from Dunfermline, especially the older uncles and aunties. She charmed every one. They expressed their surprise to me that she ever married me, but I told them I was equally surprised. The match had evidently been predestined.

[Footnote 39: John Hay, writing to his friend Henry Adams under date of London, August 25, 1887, has the following to say about the party at Kilgraston: "After that we went to Andy Carnegie in Perthshire, who is keeping his honeymoon, having just married a pretty girl.... The house is thronged with visitors--sixteen when we came away--we merely stayed three days: the others were there for a fortnight. Among them were your friends Blaine and Hale of Maine. Carnegie likes it so well he is going to do it every summer and is looking at all the great estates in the County with a view of renting or purchasing. We went with him one day to Dupplin Castle, where I saw the most beautiful trees I ever beheld in my wandering life. The old Earl of ---- is miserably poor--not able to buy a bottle of seltzer--with an estate worth millions in the hands of his creditors, and sure to be sold one of these days to some enterprising Yankee or British b.u.t.tonmaker. I wish you or Carnegie would buy it. I would visit you frequently."

(Thayer, _Life and Letters of John Hay_, vol. II, p. 74.)]

We took our piper with us when we returned to New York, and also our housekeeper and some of the servants. Mrs. Nicoll remains with us still and is now, after twenty years' faithful service, as a member of the family. George Irvine, our butler, came to us a year later and is also as one of us. Maggie Anderson, one of the servants, is the same.

They are devoted people, of high character and true loyalty.[40]

[Footnote 40: "No man is a true gentleman who does not inspire the affection and devotion of his servants." (_Problems of To-day_, by Andrew Carnegie. New York, 1908, p. 59.)]

The next year we were offered and took Cluny Castle. Our piper was just the man to tell us all about it. He had been born and bred there and perhaps influenced our selection of that residence where we spent several summers.

On March 30, 1897, there came to us our daughter. As I first gazed upon her Mrs. Carnegie said,

"Her name is Margaret after your mother. Now one request I have to make."

"What is it, Lou?"

"We must get a summer home since this little one has been given us. We cannot rent one and be obliged to go in and go out at a certain date.

It should be our home."

"Yes," I agreed.

"I make only one condition."

"What is that?" I asked.

"It must be in the Highlands of Scotland."

"Bless you," was my reply. "That suits me. You know I have to keep out of the sun's rays, and where can we do that so surely as among the heather? I'll be a committee of one to inquire and report."

Skibo Castle was the result.

It is now twenty years since Mrs. Carnegie entered and changed my life, a few months after the pa.s.sing of my mother and only brother left me alone in the world. My life has been made so happy by her that I cannot imagine myself living without her guardianship. I thought I knew her when she stood Ferdinand's test,[41] but it was only the surface of her qualities I had seen and felt. Of their purity, holiness, wisdom, I had not sounded the depth. In every emergency of our active, changing, and in later years somewhat public life, in all her relations with others, including my family and her own, she has proved the diplomat and peace-maker. Peace and good-will attend her footsteps wherever her blessed influence extends. In the rare instances demanding heroic action it is she who first realizes this and plays the part.

[Footnote 41: The reference is to the quotation from _The Tempest_ on page 214.]

The Peace-Maker has never had a quarrel in all her life, not even with a schoolmate, and there does not live a soul upon the earth who has met her who has the slightest cause to complain of neglect. Not that she does not welcome the best and gently avoid the undesirable--none is more fastidious than she--but neither rank, wealth, nor social position affects her one iota. She is incapable of acting or speaking rudely; all is in perfect good taste. Still, she never lowers the standard. Her intimates are only of the best. She is always thinking how she can do good to those around her--planning for this one and that in case of need and making such judicious arrangements or presents as surprise those cooperating with her.

I cannot imagine myself going through these twenty years without her.

Nor can I endure the thought of living after her. In the course of nature I have not that to meet; but then the thought of what will be cast upon her, a woman left alone with so much requiring attention and needing a man to decide, gives me intense pain and I sometimes wish I had this to endure for her. But then she will have our blessed daughter in her life and perhaps that will keep her patient. Besides, Margaret needs her more than she does her father.

[Ill.u.s.tration: MRS. ANDREW CARNEGIE]

[Ill.u.s.tration: MARGARET CARNEGIE AT FIFTEEN]

Why, oh, why, are we compelled to leave the heaven we have found on earth and go we know not where! For I can say with Jessica:

"It is very meet The Lord Ba.s.sanio live an upright life; For, having such a blessing in his lady, He finds the joys of heaven here on earth."

CHAPTER XVI

MILLS AND THE MEN

The one vital lesson in iron and steel that I learned in Britain was the necessity for owning raw materials and finishing the completed article ready for its purpose. Having solved the steel-rail problem at the Edgar Thomson Works, we soon proceeded to the next step. The difficulties and uncertainties of obtaining regular supplies of pig iron compelled us to begin the erection of blast furnaces. Three of these were built, one, however, being a reconstructed blast furnace purchased from the Escanaba Iron Company, with which Mr. Kloman had been connected. As is usual in such cases, the furnace cost us as much as a new one, and it never was as good. There is nothing so unsatisfactory as purchases of inferior plants.

But although this purchase was a mistake, directly considered, it proved, at a subsequent date, a source of great profit because it gave us a furnace small enough for the manufacture of spiegel and, at a later date, of ferro-manganese. We were the second firm in the United States to manufacture our own spiegel, and the first, and for years the only, firm in America that made ferro-manganese. We had been dependent upon foreigners for a supply of this indispensable article, paying as high as eighty dollars a ton for it. The manager of our blast furnaces, Mr. Julian Kennedy, is ent.i.tled to the credit of suggesting that with the ores within reach we could make ferro-manganese in our small furnace. The experiment was worth trying and the result was a great success. We were able to supply the entire American demand and prices fell from eighty to fifty dollars per ton as a consequence.

While testing the ores of Virginia we found that these were being quietly purchased by Europeans for ferro-manganese, the owners of the mine being led to believe that they were used for other purposes. Our Mr. Phipps at once set about purchasing that mine. He obtained an option from the owners, who had neither capital nor skill to work it efficiently. A high price was paid to them for their interests, and (with one of them, Mr. Davis, a very able young man) we became the owners, but not until a thorough investigation of the mine had proved that there was enough of manganese ore in sight to repay us. All this was done with speed; not a day was lost when the discovery was made.

And here lies the great advantage of a partnership over a corporation.

The president of the latter would have had to consult a board of directors and wait several weeks and perhaps months for their decision. By that time the mine would probably have become the property of others.

We continued to develop our blast-furnace plant, every new one being a great improvement upon the preceding, until at last we thought we had arrived at a standard furnace. Minor improvements would no doubt be made, but so far as we could see we had a perfect plant and our capacity was then fifty thousand tons per month of pig iron.

The blast-furnace department was no sooner added than another step was seen to be essential to our independence and success. The supply of superior c.o.ke was a fixed quant.i.ty--the Connellsville field being defined. We found that we could not get on without a supply of the fuel essential to the smelting of pig iron; and a very thorough investigation of the question led us to the conclusion that the Frick c.o.ke Company had not only the best coal and c.o.ke property, but that it had in Mr. Frick himself a man with a positive genius for its management. He had proved his ability by starting as a poor railway clerk and succeeding. In 1882 we purchased one half of the stock of this company, and by subsequent purchases from other holders we became owners of the great bulk of the shares.

There now remained to be acquired only the supply of iron stone. If we could obtain this we should be in the position occupied by only two or three of the European concerns. We thought at one time we had succeeded in discovering in Pennsylvania this last remaining link in the chain. We were misled, however, in our investment in the Tyrone region, and lost considerable sums as the result of our attempts to mine and use the ores of that section. They promised well at the edges of the mines, where the action of the weather for ages had washed away impurities and enriched the ore, but when we penetrated a small distance they proved too "lean" to work.