Famous Givers and Their Gifts. Bolton Sarah Knowles

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СКАЧАТЬ myself no longer a mere boy, but quite 'a little man;' and this made me happy."

      Another place soon opened for the lad, where he was set to fire a boiler in a cellar, and to manage the small steam-engine which drove the machinery in a bobbin factory. "The firing of this boiler was all right," says Mr. Carnegie; "for fortunately we did not use coal, but the refuse wooden chips, and I always liked to work in wood. But the responsibility of keeping the water right and of running the engine, and the danger of my making a mistake and blowing the whole factory to pieces, caused too great a strain, and I often awoke and found myself sitting up in bed through the night trying the steam-gauges. But I never told them at home that I was having a 'hard tussle.' No! no! everything must be bright to them.

      "This was a point of honor; for every member of the family was working hard except, of course, my little brother, who was then a child, and we were telling each other only all the bright things. Besides this, no man would whine and give up – he would die first.

      "There was no servant in our family, and several dollars per week were earned by 'the mother' by binding shoes after her daily work was done! Father was also hard at work in the factory. And could I complain?"

      Wages were small, and in every leisure moment Andrew looked for something better to do. He went one day to the office of the Atlantic and Ohio Telegraph Company, and asked for work as a messenger. James Douglas Reid, the manager, was a Scotchman, and liked the lad's manner. "I liked the boy's looks," said Mr. Reid afterwards; "and it was easy to see that though he was little he was full of spirit. His pay was $2.50 a week. He had not been with me a full month when he began to ask whether I would teach him to telegraph. I began to instruct him, and found him an apt pupil. He spent all his spare time in practice, sending and receiving by sound, and not by tape as was largely the custom in those days. Pretty soon he could do as well as I could at the key, and then his ambition carried him away beyond doing the drudgery of messenger work."

      The boy liked his new occupation. He once wrote: "My entrance into the telegraph office was the transition from darkness to light; from firing a small engine in a dirty cellar to a clean office where there were books and papers. That was a paradise to me, and I bless my stars that sent me to be a messenger-boy in a Pittsburg telegraph office."

      When Andrew was fourteen his father died, leaving him the only support of his mother and brother, seven years old. He believed in work, and never shirked any duty, however hard.

      He soon found employment as telegraph operator with the Pennsylvania Railroad Company. At fifteen he was train-despatcher, a place of unusual responsibility for a boy; but his energy, carefulness, and industry were equal to the demands on him.

      When he was sixteen Andrew had thought out a plan by which trains could be run on single tracks, and the telegraph be used to govern their running. "His scheme was the one now in universal use on the single-tracked roads in the country; namely, to run trains in opposite directions until they approached within comparatively a few miles, and then hold one at a station until the other had passed." This thought about the telegraph brought Andrew into notice among those above him; and he was transferred to Altoona, the headquarters of the general manager.

      Young Carnegie had done what he recommends others to do in his "How to win Fortune," in the New York Tribune, April 13, 1890. He says, "George Eliot put the matter very pithily: 'I'll tell you how I got on. I kept my ears and my eyes open, and I made my master's interest my own.'

      "The condition precedent for promotion is that the man must first attract notice. He must do something unusual, and especially must this be beyond the strict boundary of his duties. He must suggest, or save, or perform some service for his employer which he could not be censured for not having done. When he has thus attracted the notice of his immediate superior, whether that be only the foreman of a gang, it matters not; the first great step has been taken, for upon his immediate superior promotion depends. How high he climbs is his own affair."

      Carnegie "kept his eyes and ears open." In his "Triumphant Democracy" he relates the following incident: "Well do I remember that, when a clerk in the service of the Pennsylvania Railroad Company, a tall, spare, farmer-looking kind of man came to me once when I was sitting on the end seat of the rear car looking over the line. He said he had been told by the conductor that I was connected with the railway company, and he wished me to look at an invention he had made. With that he drew from a green bag (as if it were for lawyers' briefs) a small model of a sleeping-berth for railway cars. He had not spoken a minute before, like a flash, the whole range of the discovery burst upon me. 'Yes,' I said, 'that is something which this continent must have.' I promised to address him upon the subject as soon as I had talked over the matter with my superior, Thomas A. Scott.

      "I could not get that blessed sleeping-car out of my head. Upon my return I laid it before Mr. Scott, declaring that it was one of the inventions of the age. He remarked, 'You are enthusiastic, young man; but you may ask the inventor to come and let me see it.' I did so; and arrangements were made to build two trial cars, and run them on the Pennsylvania Railroad. I was offered an interest in the venture, which, of course, I gladly accepted. Payments were to be made ten per cent per month after the cars were delivered, the Pennsylvania Railroad Company guaranteeing to the builders that the cars should be kept upon its line and under its control.

      "This was all very satisfactory until the notice came that my share of the first payment was $217.50. How well I remember the exact sum; but two hundred and seventeen dollars and a half were as far beyond my means as if it had been millions. I was earning fifty dollars per month, however, and had prospects, or at least I always felt that I had. What was to be done? I decided to call on the local banker, Mr. Lloyd, state the case, and boldly ask him to advance the sum upon my interest in the affair. He put his hand on my shoulder, and said, 'Why, of course, Andie, you are all right. Go ahead. Here is the money.'

      "It is a proud day for a man when he pays his last note, but not to be named in comparison with the day in which he makes his first one, and gets a banker to take it. I have tried both, and I know. The cars paid the subsequent payments from their earnings. I paid my first note from my savings, so much per month; and thus did I get my foot on fortune's ladder. It is easy to climb after that. A triumphant success was scored. And thus came sleeping-cars into the world. 'Blessed be the man who invented sleep,' says Sancho Panza. Thousands upon thousands will echo the sentiment, 'Blessed be the man who invented sleeping-cars.' Let me record his name, and testify my gratitude to him, my dear, quiet, modest, truthful, farmer-looking friend, T. T. Woodruff, one of the benefactors of the age."

      Mr. Pullman later engaged in sleeping-car building, and Carnegie advised his firm "to capture Mr. Pullman." "There was a capture," says Mr. Carnegie, "but it did not quite take that form. They found themselves swallowed by this ogre, and Pullman monopolized everything."

      While a very young man, Carnegie was appointed superintendent of the Western Division of the Pennsylvania Railroad. As superintendent he became the friend of Colonel Scott; and, together with some others, they bought several farms along the line of the road, which proved very valuable oil-lands. Mr. Carnegie says of the Storey Farm, Oil Creek, "We purchased the farm for $40,000; and so small was our faith in the ability of the earth to yield for any considerable time the hundred barrels per day which the property was then producing, that we decided to make a pond capable of holding one hundred thousand barrels of oil, which we estimated would be worth, when the supply ceased, $1,000,000. Unfortunately for us the pond leaked fearfully, evaporation also caused much loss; but we continued to run oil in to make the losses good day after day, until several hundred thousand barrels had gone in this fashion.

      "Our experience with the farm may be worth reciting. Its value rose to $5,000,000; that is, the shares of the company sold in the market upon this basis; and one year it paid in cash dividends $1,000,000 – rather a good return upon an investment of $40,000. So great was the yield in the district that in two years oil became almost valueless, often selling as low as thirty cents per barrel, and not infrequently it was СКАЧАТЬ